(1) ENNIE TABLETOP GAME AWARD BANS AI ENTRIES. The ENNIE Awards will no longer allow AI content in submissions, effective with the 2025-26 awards season: “Revised Policy on Generative AI Usage”. The complete discussion is at the link.
…In 2023, the ENNIE Awards introduced their initial policy on generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). The policy recognized the growing presence of these technologies in modern society and their nuanced applications, from generating visual and written content to supporting background tasks such as PDF creation and word processing. The intent was to encourage honesty and transparency from creators while maintaining a commitment to human-driven creativity. Under this policy, creators self-reported AI involvement, and submissions with AI contributions were deemed ineligible for certain categories. For example, products featuring AI-generated art were excluded from art categories but remained eligible for writing categories if the text was entirely human-generated, and vice versa. The organizers faced challenges in crafting a policy that balanced inclusivity with the need to uphold the values of creativity and originality. Recognizing that smaller publishers and self-published creators often lack the resources of larger companies, the ENNIE Awards sought to avoid policies that might disproportionately impact those with limited budgets.
However, feedback from the TTRPG community has made it clear that this policy does not go far enough. Generative AI remains a divisive issue, with many in the community viewing it as a threat to the creativity and originality that define the TTRPG industry. The prevailing sentiment is that AI-generated content, in any form, detracts from a product rather than enhancing it.
In response to this feedback, the ENNIE Awards are amending their policy regarding generative AI. Beginning with the 2025-2026 submission cycle, the ENNIE Awards will no longer accept any products containing generative AI or created with the assistance of Large Language Models or similar technologies for visual, written, or edited content. Creators wishing to submit products must ensure that no AI-generated elements are included in their works. While it is not feasible to retroactively alter the rules for the 2024-2025 season, this revised policy reflects the ENNIE Awards commitment to celebrating the human creativity at the heart of the TTRPG community…
(2) ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS. The 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal winners were announced by the American Library Association today. Neither is a genre work.
FICTION
James by Percival Everett (Doubelday)
NONFICTION
Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko (Scribner)
…Calling James “an astounding riposte” to Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the ALA said that Everett “takes the story in a completely different direction than the original, exemplifying the relentless courage and moral clarity of an honorable man with nothing to lose.” Fedarko’s A Walk in the Park, which “follows the author on a canyon-spanning group hike…particularly inspires in detailing the ancestral history of the land and some of the Indigenous individuals who continue to fight against overdevelopment and ever-booming tourism,” the ALA said….
(3) FOREVER CHANGED. Sakinah Hofler, winner of the 2024 Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, tells in a new essay how science fiction, especially Octavia Butler’s, opened Hofler’s mind to new possibilities in her writing: “Defamiliarization: Against Reality to Examine Reality” at The Astounding Analog Companion.
… I remember this as a pivotal moment when science fiction changed everything I thought I knew about what I wanted to write as well as what I thought writing could do.
The first book in the Patternist series, Wild Seed, mainly takes place in West Africa and America. There are elements of slavery in it, but we are also introduced to two evolved humans—Doro, an immortal spirit who can travel from body to body, and Anwanyu, a shape-shifter and healer—characters who, over the centuries, fluctuate between being allies and enemies. During the height of the slave trade, both of them, separately, wind up starting their own colonies of superhumans. What drew me in and what made this novel feel different and refreshing was Butler’s ability to make the familiar unfamiliar, or, as dubbed by Darko Suvin, evoke a feeling of “cognitive estrangement.” She created a world familiar enough for me to recognize, yet, by injecting supernatural elements had destabilized my understanding of reality, thwarted my expectations, and offered an alternative, complicated, hopeful history and future….
We are delighted to announce the Sea Star Scholarship, an annual full-tuition scholarship for our flagship Six-Week Workshop, offered by an anonymous donor, which will be awarded each year to one qualifying student who identifies as two-spirit, trans, nonbinary, or under the gender expansive umbrella.
Through the generosity of our donors, Clarion West provides a number of scholarships for writers every year. Approximately 60–90% of our Six-Week Workshop participants receive full and partial-tuition scholarships. Interested students must indicate financial need when applying to the summer workshop. Applications are reviewed without regard to financial aid requests. You can learn more about scholarships for the Six-Week Workshop here.
At Clarion West we are proud to be part of a supportive community for trans, two-spirit, nonbinary, and other gender expansive authors who continue to change and inform the landscape of speculative fiction for the better. We know that trans writers are and will continue to be essential in expanding the boundaries of SFFH and are equally essential in inviting new exciting voices into the field.
We know the journey for each trans writer is different, and that trans people represent all racial and ethnic backgrounds, faith traditions, and countries around the world. And we know that while there has been significant progress in the publishing world, the transgender community is still facing significant political and personal attacks through discrimination and violence, especially against Black and Brown trans women.
We remain committed to supporting trans authors and learning how to better support them in a field that can be hostile and unwelcoming. We do this through our efforts to provide an intersectional framework of support for trans authors. The organization welcomes trans faculty, seeks to create supportive spaces for trans authors in workshop groups, and makes every effort to create an inclusive community throughout our programs.
Transphobia is not welcome or tolerated in our classrooms, at our events, nor in our workspace. We support our students and community members with robust community guidelines and anti-harassment reporting policies. When we are informed of instructor or participant misconduct, Clarion West makes every effort to verify, follow up with those who may have been harmed, and to ensure that we take the steps necessary to prevent future misconduct, up to and including exclusion from Clarion West classes and events.
In the spirit of celebrating the contributions of trans and nonbinary writers to our field, we are working on a recommended reading list of trans and nonbinary writers who are either Clarion West alumni and/or Clarion West faculty! If you would like your website or stories on this list, please contact us at workshop@clarionwest.org!
In an ominous indication of the new administration’s approach to book censorship, on Friday the new leadership of the Department of Education announced that its Office for Civil Rights has “dismissed” 17 complaints and pending complaints “related to so-called ‘book bans’ ” and said the idea that “local school districts’ removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students” and constitutes a civil rights violation is “a meritless claim based upon a dubious legal theory.” The Office for Civil Rights also ended the position of “book ban coordinator” and rescinded an agreement reached with Forsyth County School District in Georgia. The Office’s statement has the headline, “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax.”
The announcement of the changes stated in part, “On Jan. 20, 2025, incoming OCR leadership initiated a review of alleged ‘book banning’ cases pending at the department. Attorneys quickly confirmed that books are not being ‘banned,’ but that school districts, in consultation with parents and community stakeholders, have established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials. Because this is a question of parental and community judgment, not civil rights, OCR has no role in these matters.”
The Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor added, “By dismissing these complaints and eliminating the position and authorities of a so-called ‘book ban coordinator,’ the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education. The department adheres to the deeply rooted American principle that local control over public education best allows parents and teachers alike to assess the educational needs of their children and communities. Parents and school boards have broad discretion to fulfill that important responsibility. These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.”
Several book world organizations responded quickly. Kasey Meehan, director, Freedom to Read, at PEN America, said in a statement: “For over three years we have countered rhetoric that book bans occurring in public schools are a ‘hoax.’ They are absolutely not. This kind of language from the U.S. Department of Education is alarming and dismissive of the students, educators, librarians, and authors who have firsthand experiences of censorship happening within school libraries and classrooms….
(6) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present: Clay McLeod Chapman & Rebecca Fraimow on Wednesday, February 12. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003, (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs). Starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
Clay McLeod Chapman
Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, young adult and middle grade books, as well as for film and television. His most recent novels include Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, What Kind of Mother, and Ghost Eaters.
Version 1.0.0
Rebecca Fraimow
Rebecca Fraimow is the author of science fiction romantic comedy Lady Eve’s Last Con, a NY Times Best Romance Novel of 2024, as well as the science fiction novella The Iron Children. Rebecca has also published short stories in various venues, including the Hugo-longlisted “This Is New Gehesran Calling,” and cohosts the podcast Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones with Emily Tesh. Rebecca also works as an audiovisual archivist preserving the history of public television. She’s married to fellow author Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and lives in Boston with a couple of extremely lucky black cats.
Join me as I look back at the trouble I had getting out of an elevator at the first Star Trek convention, what my ballot looked like when I voted for the 1968 Alley Awards, the composers who wrote the music to match the lyrics I had Rick Jones sing in Captain Marvel #50, what teen me got wrong (twice!) about Jim Steranko, the three comics characters I almost cosplayed as at the 1972 Rutland Halloween parade, the mystery woman who would have been my Beautiful Dreamer on a Forever People float, and much more.
And it can be downloaded through a variety of platforms at this link.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
January 27, 1999 — Voyager episode “Bride of Chaotica”
Captain Janeway: Coffee, black.
Neelix: I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve lost another two replicators
Kathryn Janeway: Listen to me very carefully because I’m only going to say this once. Coffee – black.
Twenty-six years ago this evening on the UPN network Star Trek: Voyager‘s “Bride of Chaotica!” first aired. It was the twelfth episode of the fifth season of the series. The episode is a loving homage to the 1936 Flash Gordon film serial and 1939 Buck Rogers film serial that followed. Much of the episode was shot in black and white to emulate the look of those shows.
The episode largely takes place on the Holodeck set because of a small fire to the Bridge set that had occurred while the episode was in production, so the Bridge scenes were shot weeks later after the set was repaired and many of the scenes that were originally set for the Bridge were either entirely rewritten or set on a different part of the ship.
The story was Bryan Fuller who was the writer and executive producer on Voyager and Deep Space Nine; he is also the co-creator of Discovery. The script was by Fuller and Michael Taylor who was best known as a writer on Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
Critics really liked it. SyFy Wire said it was “campy, hilarious, hysterical, brilliant, and an absolute joy.” And CBR noted that Voyager was “having fun with its goofier side.”
The coffee dialogue had me looking up drink preferences for the Captains. We know Picard liked Earl Grey tea, and I’m reasonably sure Kirk was never shown drinking a morning brew. (Alcoholic drinks are another matter, aren’t they for all of them?) Sisko enjoyed raktajino, a potent Klingon coffee, and Archer drank sweetened iced tea. I can’t find anything that indicates what Burnham had for a morning drink.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
January 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 68.
By Paul Weimer: I come to talk to you about Frank Miller strictly in his movie adaptations and work. As is my wont and practice, these writeups are my own personal engagement with a creator and their work. I could write a Wikipedia-style article cribbed from sources but that wouldn’t be me. That would be barely better than LLM.
So I’ve never sat down to read his extensive comic book oeuvre. I am not a huge comics fan to begin with, my interests are occasional, narrow and scattershot. But that’s a story for another time.
Frank Miller came to my attention through the movies, and it was through the original Sin City that he really came to my attention. I was absorbed by the visuals, the style, and the strong archetypal characters that we see in the original movie. I didn’t even know, until after I had watched it, that there was a graphic novel that had originated the story. I did later flip through it, just to see how the one had been adapted to the other.
But time and life is short and I didn’t go into Miller’s comic oeuvre. Instead, I kept an eye out on the films he wrote and directed and contributed to. The ahistorical 300, which I rationalize its utter ahistoricity in my mind as being a pack of lies being told by the one-eyed Dilios to get the Greeks pumped up and ready to fight. He’s a storyteller, he’s lying about the battle rhinos and everything else.
300 Rise of an Empire doesn’t have that frame to work, and I think it’s a stronger film, too. The Spirit? An utter and terrible mess and I can’t recommend it for any real reason. I did not need to see Samuel Jackson in a fascist uniform. I just didn’t. And the second Sin City? For me, it didn’t capture the magic of the first. Maybe because we “Saw it already before” and the surprise splash of the first had receded. We know the tricks in the bag for the film, and so the second movie just is…there, and not as good as one might like. I’ve never revisited it, although I’ve watched the original Sin City again more than once.
In any event, his visuals have been a leading light of neo-noir style and are strong on those axes, an inspiration for those interested in visuals of that type.
The Big Bang Theory finished 2024 as the year’s “most-binged title” in streaming, according to a new report from Nielsen.
The sitcom averaged 265.5 episodes per viewer on Max, the measurement firm said, or 29.1 billion minutes of total viewing. The long-running former CBS series has 281 total episodes available for streaming.
Coming in at No. 7 overall among this year’s top streaming titles, Big Bang saw 58% of its watch time accounted for by adults 18 to 49.
The “average episodes per viewer” stat refers to the amount of time (with episodes lasting at least 20 minutes each) spent viewing the show. It does not indicate the number of unique episodes seen by each viewer….
It certainly wasn’t obvious from the beginning when someone in a Milanese court added 22 new picture cards – drawing on Roman gods or classical virtues such as temperance or love which could act as an allegory for life – to a standard deck in order to enhance the complexity and fun of the game. “It wouldn’t be until the late-18th century,” says co-curator Jonathan Allen, “that a French pastor and scholar of the occult, Antoine Court de Gébelin, came to the conclusion that what he was looking at wasn’t an ordinary set of cards, but actually a concealed Egyptian religious text called the Book of Thoth.” A Parisian print seller and former seed merchant called John-Baptiste Alliette soon appropriated the theory, founded a society dedicated to its study and established himself as interpreter of the Book of Thoth before producing a new tarot deck explicitly used for fortune-telling under the reversed pen-name Etteilla. His deck, largely used by secret aristocratic magical societies, set the visual and spiritual tone in thinking and practice for the next few centuries until the early 20th century and the British occult revival.
It was the various expulsions and fragmentations of the Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn – a secret society exploring magic and occult mysticism which included WB Yeats and Aleister Crowley as members – that then created the dominant decks of the 20th and 21st centuries…
Elton John has backed Paul McCartney in criticising a proposed overhaul of the UK copyright system, and has called for new rules to prevent tech companies from riding “roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods”.
John has backed proposed amendments to the data (use and access) bill that would extend existing copyright protections, when it goes before a vote in the House of Lords on Tuesday.
The government is also consulting on an overhaul of copyright laws that would result in artists having to opt out of letting AI companies train their models using their work, rather than an opt-in model.
McCartney told the BBC that the proposed changes could disincentivise writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity”. The former Beatle said: “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off.”
“The truth is, the money’s going somewhere … Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”
John told the Sunday Times that he felt “wheels are in motion to allow AI companies to ride roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods. This will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music. This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”
A teaser trailer of a spaceship making a crash landing on Earth dropped during the AFC Championship game [on Sunday]….
…From Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth is set two years before the events of the 1979 film Alien.
According to the show’s synopsis, “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat in the sci-fi horror series Alien: Earth.
(16) COOL WORLDS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Prof David Kipping, the Brit astrophysicist at Columbia U, USA, over at Cool Worlds looks at a forthcoming paper due to be published in Nature Astronomy.
What they have done is surveyed exoplanets that are more or less Earth-sized around K and M type stars. (M-type stars are small red dwarfs that are so cold that habitable exoplanets have to be close to the star and so are tidally locked. Also, because of their low mass, M-types stars prone to flaring which is not good for any nearby putative life. However, K-type stars are just a little more like Earth’s G-type Sun and so are of exobiological interest.) what they have found is that these planet’s orbits are almost circular just like our Earth’s…
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 John Hertz.]
(1) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. For Andrew Porter it was a short walk to yesterday’s City Tech SF Symposium in Brooklyn. He brought his camera with him and shot these photos during the “Asimov/Analog Writers Panel”.
L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, moderator Emily Hockaday, senior managing editor of Analog and Asimov’s SF magazines. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.Emily Hockaday. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.Sakina Hoefler. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
(2) SKYWALKER SHELTERS IN PLACE. The Franklin Fire has forced several well-known celebrities to evacuate, but some haven’t left.
The Franklin fire is raging through California’s Malibu coast, causing evacuations and ravaging homes while some celebrities like Mark Hamill shelter in place.
Hamill took to Instagram on Tuesday to share with fans that he would not evacuate his California home, with the “Star Wars” star telling his 6.2 million followers on the platform to “stay safe.”
“We’re in lockdown because of the Malibu fires. Please stay safe everyone! I’m not allowed to leave the house, which fits in perfectly with my elderly-recluse lifestyle,” Hamill wrote.
Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke is also one of the celebrities in the affected area, saying on Facebook that he evacuated the area with his wife Arlene.
The Franklin Fire continued to explode in size overnight and covers 3,983 acres as of Wednesday morning with 7% containment, according to CalFire. Late Tuesday night, officials said 2,667 had burned. It was fueled by strong Santa Ana winds and low humidity, a dangerous combination prompting red flag warnings in the region through Wednesday evening….
Others who have evacuated include Cher, Eagles rocker Don Henley, and Cindy Crawford.
(3) PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a nominee in documentary category for the 36th annual PGA Awards. The complete list of nominated documentaries is at the link. That is the first and only PGA category announced so far.
The SoA’s call comes following writers expressing frustration in recent months about celebrities writing books at a time when author incomes are in decline. Last year, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown was criticised over her novel, Nineteen Steps, which was ghostwritten by Kathleen McGurl. While Brown publicly acknowledged McGurl’s work in an Instagram post, critics said that McGurl’s name “should be on the cover”.
JUST WEST OF CHICAGO, THERE is a little spot of spooky in the charming downtown of St. Charles, Illinois. Ghoulish Mortals is made up of equal parts immersive haunted house-style vignettes, macabre art gallery, and pop culture collector gift shop.
Haunting organ music leads you down the quaint downtown sidewalks and into the dark mysterious doors. As you make your way exploring through the shop, you will travel through a haunted mansion, a fortune teller’s tent, an 80s living room inspired by Stranger Things, a killer clown circus, abandoned hospital operating room, cannibal swamp cabin, and even come face to face with Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.
If you love horror movies, true crime, the occult, oddities, or fantasy, leaving this shop empty-handed is nearly impossible!
(7) RHYSLING AWARD CHAIR NAMED. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2025 Rhysling Award Chair will be Pixie Bruner.
Pixie Bruner (HWA/SFPA) is a writer, editor, mutant, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, GA, with her doppelgänger and their alien cats. Her collection The Body As Haunted was published in 2024 (Authortunities Press). She co-curated and edited Nature Triumphs : A Charity Anthology of Dark Speculative Literature (Dark Moon Rising Publications). Her words are in/forthcoming from Space & Time Magazine, Hotel Macabre (Crystal Lake Publishing), Star*Line, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Dreams & Nightmares, Angry Gable Press, Punk Noir, and many more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs are all her fault.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Thirty-two years ago, The Muppet Christmas Carol premiered, directed by Brian Henson (in his feature film directorial debut) from the screenplay by Jerry Juhl.
Based amazingly faithfully off that beloved story, it starred Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge with a multitude of Muppet performers, to wit Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Ed Sanders, Jerry Nelson, Theo Sanders, Kristopher Milnes, Russell Martin, Ray Coulthard and Frank Oz, to name just some of them.
I must single out Jessica Fox as the voice of Ghost of Christmas Past, a stellar performance indeed.
Following Jim Henson’s death in May 1990, the talent agent Bill Haber had approached Henson’s son Brian with the idea of filming an adaptation. It was pitched to ABC as a television film, but Disney ended up purchasing it instead. That’s why it’s only available on Disney+ these days.
Critics in general liked it with Roger Ebert being among them though he added that it “could have done with a few more songs than it has, and the merrymaking at the end might have been carried on a little longer, just to offset the gloom of most of Scrooge’s tour through his lifetime spent spreading misery.”
Ebert added of Caine playing Scrooge that, “He is the latest of many human actors (including the great Orson Welles) to fight for screen space with the Muppets, and he sensibly avoids any attempt to go for a laugh. He plays the role straight and treats the Muppets as if they are real. It is not an easy assignment.”
They did give him his own song which showed us the cast.
Those songs were by Paul Williams, another one of his collaborations with the Jim Henson Company after working on The Muppet Movie.
Box office wise it did just ok, as it made twenty-seven million against production costs of twelve million, not counting whatever was spent on marketing. And that Christmas goose.
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a rather ungloomy rating of eighty-eight percent.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Reality Check should not be surprised by these test results.
The writer responsible for the most celebrated episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is launching a new gritty sci-fi series. As reported by Deadline,Morgan Gendel — writer of TNG’s “The Inner Light” — has just secured a deal with Welsh broadcaster S4C, Hiraeth Productions, Canada’s Fun Republic Pictures and Karma Film, to develop a new “eco-thriller” science fiction show currently titled Isolation. The in-development series will focus on an ensemble of characters attempting to combat climate change in the near future, who also encounter an extraterrestrial force capable of direct contact with human minds.
“There’s a whole ‘Inner Light,’ kind of linkage here, to the extent that both deal with alien technology and the human brain,” Gendel tells Inverse. “And you’ve got a team thrown together isolated from humanity to one extent or another. Those are not intentional [parallels]. My writing often puts people in a pressure cooker to see what emotions or truths boil out of them.”…
… All the same, Jean Ransy may fit the Surrealist bill even if he doesn’t seem to have had any lasting connections with those groups who regarded themselves as the official guardians of the Surrealist flame. Ransy was Belgian artist which makes him Surrealist by default if you subscribe to Jonathan Meades’ proposition that Belgium is a Surrealist nation at heart. (Magritte wasn’t a Surrealist, says Meades, he was a social realist.)
Ransy’s paintings appear at first glance like a Belgian equivalent of Rex Whistler in their pictorial realism and refusal to jump on the Modernist bandwagon. Whistler and Ransy were contemporaries (Whistler was born in 1905) but Whistler’s paintings were much more restrained even when outright fantasy entered his baroque pastiches. The “metaphysical” vistas of Giorgio de Chirico are mentioned as an influence on Ransy’s work so he was at least looking at living artists, something you never sense with Whistler. There’s a de Chirico quality in the tilted perspectives and accumulations of disparate objects, also a hint of Max Ernst in one or two paintings….
Le chemin de ronde au visage soleil (1985).
(12) JUSTWATCH SHARES 2024 TOP 10 LISTS. What were the most-watched movies and TV shows on streaming services in 2024? JustWatch compiled these year-end Streaming Charts based on user activity, including: clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as ‘seen’. This data is collected from >45 million movie & TV show fans per month. It is updated daily for 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services.
2024 was packed with standout streaming hits. Movies like “Civil War”, “Oppenheimer”, and “The Fall Guy” drew huge audiences with their mix of action and drama. On the TV side, shows like “Shogun”, “Fallout”, and our streaming charts champion “The Bear” kept viewers hooked all year long. Whether it was blockbuster films or binge-worthy series, there was something for everyone. These titles set the tone for another exciting year in entertainment.
When the trailer for Danny Boyle’s belated zombie sequel 28 Years Later released on Tuesday, the less-than-rosy-cheeked appearance of the first film’s star, Cillian Murphy, did not escape comment.
A scene in which a strikingly skinny member of the undead suddenly rears up, naked, behind new star Jodie Comer was taken as confirmation of rumours that Murphy had returned for an appearance in the new film….
…Yet the Guardian can reveal that the actor playing “Emaciated Infected” in the film, due for release in June 2025, is not Murphy but rather newcomer Angus Neill.
Neill, an art dealer specialising in old masters, was talent-spotted by Boyle, who was much struck by his distinctive looks. Neill also works as a model, with his professional profile suggesting he has a 28-inch waist….
(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George takes us inside the “Elf Pitch Meeting” – one of the retro reviews stockpiled in anticipation of his baby arriving.
Will Ferrell is one of the most successful comedy actors of our time – but back in 2003, it was kind of a surprise to see him leading a Christmas movie as a giant non-elf. Elf ended up becoming a holiday classic, but it still raises some questions. Like what happened to that poor nun? Why didn’t the news reporter follow up on anything? Is Buddy the elf actually kind of creepy? So check out the pitch meeting that led to Elf to find out how it all came together!
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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.]
Sakinah Hofler, winner of the 2023 Analog Award For Emerging Black Voices, made an impressive acceptance speech to the audience of the online 8th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium this past November 30. Hofler has given permission for File 770 to publish her remarks.
I am thrilled and humbled to be selected as this year’s winner for the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices. Growing up in an ultra-conservative Muslim community in New Jersey where the line between “RIGHT and “WRONG” was drawn with a thick black marker, I discovered complication and nuance through reading and writing. I met characters who were different races, from different backgrounds, from all around the world or different parts of the universe. I witnessed other spiritual practices. I observed how a monster could become a person and a person could become a monster. I started to see gray all around me. I questioned everything. My questioning always got me into trouble, so I spent a lot of time on punishment, banished to my room where I reread and eventually rewrote the endings of my favorite books, always asking “What if…” “What if life doesn’t have to be this way?” “What if I also lived on Fear Street and had to battle ghosts and murderers?” “What if Jim Crow had never happened? Where would we be?” I could build worlds, and no one could stop me.
For a while, though, reality did. We have not figured out a way to live without money and, so, we have bills. I buried my questions and became practical, pursing a degree in chemical engineering. I spent years sitting in more rooms, but those rooms were filled with people dressed in uniforms and suits, making decisions about weapons while we were in the midst of two wars. Those rooms were cold. Logical. Full of statistics and devoid of empathy. Deadly. In those rooms the walls were decorated with photographs of soldiers firing mortars or howitzers or shooting M16s, the type of photos taken on bright days with expensive cameras able to capture the taut look of concentration on each soldier’s face and the billowing smoke right after the moment of fire.
I once asked my boss why we didn’t have any pictures of the weapons hitting their target. Where, I wondered, were the pictures of demolished homes, collapsed buildings, wailing children, dismembered bodies, dust?
His response: Why would anyone want to come to work and see that?
What I didn’t say at that time, but I wished I had was: because we need to see. By stripping people from their multi-faceted stories and narratives, by stripping them from their humanity, we will continue to Other. We will continue to be the protagonists in every story, lose empathy, and remain stuck in a never-ending cycle of receiving and delivering pain. We would never see what could be, how our world could different, how we could live in peace. It’s possible.
We need science fiction. We need the Octavia Butlers, the Samuel Delanys, the Ted Chiang’s, the Isaac Asimovs, the N.K. Jemisins, the Sofia Samatars, and so on. We need the Analogs, the Strange Horizons, the Lightspeeds, the FIYAHs, the Clarkesworlds, and so on to be outlets for our imaginations. I am thankful to the judges and Analog for selecting my work as this year’s winner. I’m so excited to be mentored by wonderful editors. I am thankful for all of you in this room, right here, where there’s hope and a belief in what science fiction is capable of. When it feels like the world is crumbling or, rather, stacking up dystopian nightmares (climate disaster, totalitarianism, the pandemic, income inequality, decreasing autonomy over our bodies, war, etc., etc.), it’s stories that allow us to imagine how we can shift and shape our futures, how we can interact with technology, how we can live differently, how we can change the world, by simply starting our questions with “What if…” Thank you all so much.
[Thanks to Analog editor Trevor Quachri for obtaining permission for File 770 to publish this.]
