Dande’s winning piece is The Keeper of the Ship. He is a writer, artist, and musician living in New Delhi, India. His academic research on topics such as reading planetary history, death in roguelike videogames, Cold War fantasies of space colonization, and Jorge Luis Borges have been presented at international conferences in Kolkata, London, and Lisbon. He is currently a PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he researches the relationship between science fiction, conspiracy theory, and esotericism.
He enjoys carrying a sketchbook every day for drawing with friends and strangers. He enjoys the way an idea falls from the sky, still warm from the lathe. He enjoys reading, twitchy and marionette-like, in an unfamiliar language. He enjoys being awash in music until birds stir in the blue dawn. He is writing a novel that he very much hopes you will one day read
In 2019, the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit co-sponsored the A.C. Bose Grant in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose, a lover of books—especially science fiction and fantasy. Bose’s children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose, founded the grant to honor the legacy of the worlds their father opened up for them. The donors hope that this grant will help develop work that will let young people imagine different worlds and possibilities.
Launched in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the Speculative Literature Foundation addresses historical inequities in access to literary opportunities for marginalized writers. The SLF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. For more information, visit speculativeliterature.org.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Village of Oak Park, Illinois Arts Council Agency, National Endowment for the Arts and Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.
The Speculative Literature Foundation has selected “Star Thief” by Flore Picard as SLF’s 2025 Illustration of the Year. See the artwork at the link.
Picard commented on her work: “‘Star Thief’ is a story about creating freedom. In a futuristic world of glass and metal, she made herself wings out of her prison, a harness out of her shackles, and flew up to seek out the stars. Inspired by the myth of Icarus, but her story will have a different ending: here, it is night and there is no sun. Flying into the sky, the Star Thief is daring but wise beyond her youth; rather than getting burned, she will embrace and befriend the stars.”
Flore Picard is a French artist with a passion for patterns and systems, for the beauty at the edge of chaos and the complexity of being human. Fascinated with words and languages for as long as they can remember, they have found ways to express their inner world through both linguistics and the grammar of visual art.
Picard will receive a cash prize of $750. The winning artwork will be featured throughout 2025 on the SLF’s website, newsletter, social media accounts and other materials. “Star Thief” is the SLF’s eighth annual Illustration of the Year. Learn more about the annual Illustration of the Year contest here.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. They encourage promising new writers, assist established writers, facilitate the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and work to promote a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, in partnership with the Village of Oak Park; the Illinois Arts Council; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in Nature: Futures, Mythaxis, Northern Gravy, Radon, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Utopia, MetaStellar, Milk Candy Review, Roi Fainéant, JAKE and more. Burnett’s winning piece is Amaranth.
Shortlisted for the 2024 award were Shawnna Thomas, Nasser Yousefi and LuLu Johnson.
Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has sought to assist writers of speculative literature (in fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction) in their research. The grant awards one writer $1000 annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses. Visit SLF’s grants page for more information.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. They encourage promising new writers, assist established writers, facilitate the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and work to promote a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction.
The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. If you’d like to be involved with our efforts, please consider joining as a member, starting at $2 a month.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, in partnership with the Village of Oak Park; the Illinois Arts Council; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that Hannah Onoguwe is the winner of their 2024 Working Class Writers Grant for her work “Eyes of the Igbadai.”
Onoguwe’s winning piece is called “Eyes of the Igbadai.”
Shortlisted were Katherine Cart, Loren Smith, Moraine Velasco and Marianne Xenos.
Since 2013 the Working Class Writers Grant has been awarded annually to speculative fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, who have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction due to financial barriers which make it hard to access the writing world. Learn more at the Working Class Writers Grant webpage.
Hannah Onoguwe’s speculative fiction has appeared in Omenana, Imagine Africa 500, Eleven Eleven, Pervisions, Mysterion, Timeworn LitMag, Flame Tree Press, and Mukana with other fiction in various literary magazines and anthologies. In 2016 she won the poetry contest organized by the Bayelsa State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors, was shortlisted for the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize and longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Her collection of short stories, Cupid’s Catapult, was one of the ten books to kickstart the Nigerian Writers Series, an imprint of the Association of Nigerian Authors. She is a charter member of the African Speculative Fiction Society, an Associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, and a Climate Imagination Fellow with the Centre for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. She has served as a judge for various contests including the Hysteria Writing Competition and the Bloody Parchment HorrorFest.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Ibadan and a Master’s in Organizational Psychology from the University of Jos. She has served as Secretary of the Bayelsa State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors, and has a novel forthcoming with Ouida Press’s Books of Phoenix in 2025. Hannah is a mother of three and lives in Yenagoa.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. They encourage promising new writers, assist established writers, facilitate the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and work to promote a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction. Learn more at speculativeliterature.org.
The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. If you’d like to be involved with their efforts, consider joining as a member for $2/month, at speculativeliterature.org/membership.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, in partnership with the Village of Oak Park; the Illinois Arts Council; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
(1) AWARD UPDATE. Emily Hockaday, Analog/Asimov’s Senior Managing Editor, says the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices usually presented at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has been put “on hiatus over 2025 due to personal commitments, but we hope to offer it again the following year.”
(2) CHRISTIE’SSFF ART AUCTION SCORECARD. Christie’s has posted the results of its December 12 “Science Fiction and Fantasy” auction. Sandra Miesel speculates, “The price for the Ender’s Game art must be some kind of record!” The John Harris cover art fetched ten times its estimated value.
[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, how wonderful to meet you in person. [Snarl] I need a job. [Simon Goquickly] Of course, of course and this is quite a resume you have here! [Snarl] I got the wizard to write it. [Simon Goquickly] Ah, I see – that would be Karl the Angstomancer, the cursed conjurer of Battlehaven. How is he these days? [Snarl] Dead. Eaten by a beetle. [Simon Goquickly] Oh dear. Eaten by beetles! What a ghastly fate. [Snarl] A bettle. Just the one. Karl was in very small pieces at the time….
…The clock is ticking and I need to teach Bradbury and I’m speed-reading a Vanity Fair piece with growing alarm. Had I wanted to know more than what I already knew about Cormac? What do we know about Thomas Pynchon, for instance? How much was life enhanced by reading those New York Times profiles of Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, or Lore Segal?…
…I need to get to class. I’m walking and trying to puzzle out how I feel and why I think I am so mad. What do we search for in stories? It’s one thing to teach Bradbury’s ideas about state control and personal freedom. It’s another thing to walk to class and try to privately mourn… what? That Cormac was a bad dude? That one of my favorite writers was a monster? Here’s the deal: I do not know what to think and I can’t say exactly why….
..How much did it matter whether or not I had met the author? What role did imaginary or real people play in whether a book had the juice to keep us thinking about it years later? Why do stories stay with us and demand reading and re-reading? What was I learning as I struggled to reckon with what I knew and had not known about Cormac?…
…Just what am I getting at, with my paltry memories of famous writers? In my most cherished little stories, I seem to care whether or not writers were nice to me and people like me. The imbalance is inescapable. The world is cruel. Why do we write and why do we read? What power do we grant others over us? Especially when they’re so good at telling us stories we want to hear?…
Tensions over The Animation Guild‘s controversial new tentative contract spilled into public view on Tuesday as the ratification vote for the deal began.
Three members of the union’s sprawling negotiating committee posted on social media that they personally will be voting “no” on the tentative contract that they helped to bargain, primarily due to concerns about provisions covering generative AI. But that same day, the union’s chief negotiator said the agreement improved on recent deals “by a good margin” and warned that not ratifying the agreement could be “dangerous,” risking losing more work in Los Angeles.
The Animation Guild’s 56-person negotiating committee consisted of a “table team” of 29 members that met across the table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and a support team of 27 members. Both teams weighed in on proposals and changes to proposals, but only the table team voted on the tentative agreement — and largely voted favor of the deal. Two of the negotiating committee members that posted on Tuesday were part of the support team, while one served on the table team.
“I believe the AI and outsourcing protections in this contract are not strong enough — and in my opinion — could lead to the loss of lots of jobs,” Mitchell vs. The Machines writer-director Mike Rianda posted on Instagram on Tuesday. Adding that there were gains in the contract, like pay increases and health benefits improvements, Rianda argued that the pact’s A.I. protections give “sole power to the employer to make us use A.I. however they see fit.”…
It’s been over twenty years since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get that magic back. Director Peter Jackson couldn’t do it with the lackluster and tonally confused Hobbit trilogy. The Rings of Power on Amazon feels like a prime example of Mid TV where a lot of money was spent to make something that’s not bad, but also not all that interesting, and certainly not as good as the thing it’s meant to evoke. The best Lord of the Rings thing of the past twenty years is probably the video game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and even the story pales next to its gameplay mechanics.
While Lord of the Rings kicked off a string of fantasy film imitators throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the future of fantasy storytelling on screen went to Game of Thrones. It pulled the genre in a more “realistic” direction meant to echo the violence and politicking of 15th century England, and others have assumed that fantasy will only appeal to modern audiences if it’s people using violence to jockey for position. This is a far cry from the Lord of the Rings, the world fell in love with where power is a corruptive force and inflicting violence, while necessary in war, is not necessarily what makes a hero.
Sadly, the new animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim feels more in line with the hit HBO series of the 2010s than the hit Peter Jackson movies of the 2000s. Even though the animated movie, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, wears the clothing of Jackson’s movies with musical cues borrowed from Howard Shore’s unforgettable scores and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) providing the narration, these trappings only serve to highlight the distance between Rohirrim and the Oscar-winning trilogy….
…Plenty of the movers and shakers in Middle-earth are women, starting in the realm’s earliest history and carrying right through to the later times when the last of the Elves finally sailed into the West. The protectors of Doriath, the foe of Morgoth, and the slayer of the Nazgul were exploits carried out by the strongest women in Middle-earth.
Number one on the list is still waiting for her close-up:
Melian
Wife Of King Thingol And Mother Of Luthien
Out of all the notable characters in Middle-earth, Melian is one of the few who has yet to appear in any on-screen adaptations. A Maiar on the same level as the Wizards who would follow in her footsteps, Melian chose a different life when she arrived in Middle-earth. The Vala she served was Yavanna, and when she met Prince Elwe, who would eventually become King Thingol, she took on a mortal form to be his queen.
Melian not only protected her husband’s kingdom using her power, but she also mentored a young Galadriel, who would use the same magic to protect her realm of Lothlorien. Melain and Thingo had one child, a girl named Luthien, who would challenge her mother when it came to heroic exploits.
(8) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out an open call for its “Illustration of the Year 2025”, a piece of original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured on the SLF website, monthly e-newsletter and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag throughout the year. Submissions are being taken through January 15, 2025. The winner will be announced in February 2025. Full guidelines at the link.
The winning artist will receive $750.00 and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on the SLF’s website and social media and in a press release.
At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure – squabbled over by her mother and husband Ted Hughes, it supposedly disappeared in 1970 – or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy, the influential treatise on theater thought to have burned at a Benedictine Abbey in 1327 (at least, according to Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose). The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist….
…“It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to even consider having an exhibition of the imaginary,” said [Reid] Byers, a multi-hyphenate bibliophile who has also worked as a Presbyterian minister, a welder and a C language programmer, on a recent tour of the exhibition….
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Born December 12, 1976 — Tim Pratt, 48.
By Paul Weimer: In both his straight up name and his pen names, Pratt has written a slew of novels, having “graduated” to novels after a run of shorter fiction that culminated with his Hugo award winning story “Impossible Dreams”. That short story’s parallel universe heart is something that I see and encounter again and again in his fiction. Parallel universes, adjacent dimensions, demiplanes, and the like populate many of his novels, one way or another.
It was in his Pathfinder tie-in work that I first started reading his novels, proceeding through the kindle serial Heirs of Grace and into his even more ambitious work. I want to highlight these two.
The Axiom novels are a fun trio of space opera novels, revolving around a freight and salvage ship, the White Raven, accidentally finding the secret to a dread Alien race, the titular Axiom, whose awakening would spell doom for humanity. The crew of the White Raven, in a breezy trio of reads that belie their doorstopper status catapult themselves from frying pans to fires as they are literally on the front line of trying to protect humanity from an existential threat.
But it is the Doors of Sleep books that I think Pratt really hits all cylinders. The premise is deceptively simple, our protagonist Zaxony has, for reasons slowly revealed in the unfolding of the story, been granted a blessing and a curse. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new parallel world. As far as he can tell, he can’t ever “go back”, either. And so with a tone often reminiscent of Doctor Who and Sliders, Zaxony finds himself traveling from world to world.
The novel is clever in that it starts us in media res, Zaxony has been through this for nearly three years of personal time when the novel begins, so we get to see how he’s adapted and tried to deal with his gift. In fashion reminiscent of both Doctor Who and Sliders, it emerges that Zaxony isn’t the only person who can travel the worlds…but Zaxony’s gift makes him a target. The pair of novels go down easy and are a fun read and are my current Tim Pratt favorites.
Time-travelling drama about the Japanese American legends of US military history – inspired by real events. The story of the 442nd Regiment fighting the Nazi German army in World War Two. An original six-part drama, released from 9th December 2024. Written by Oscar nominee Iris Yamashita and narrated by Will Sharpe.
…Here are the 10 we would be most excited to see from the 2024 list (via Variety; you can check out the full list here), all hailing from the sci-fi, horror, and fantasy realms….
For one example:
The 13th Hour by Anna Klassen
“When a group of teenagers repair an old clock with a mysterious 13th numeral, they are granted an extra hour where their actions have no consequence.”
Something tells us there will be consequences, eventually, for the tinkering kids—their magical control of time notwithstanding.
Excavations in northeastern Iraq have unveiled neatly stacked bowls dating to more than 5,300 years ago that bear evidence of organized societies and whose abandonment points to eventual rejection of the state.
Mesopotamia was home to the world’s most ancient cities and state institutions, such as the Copper Age Uruk civilization. Claudia Glatz at the University of Glasgow, UK, and her collaborators excavated a Copper Age site that, in its final phase, shared close cultural ties with Uruk. They found mass-produced bowls with bevelled rims (pictured) that indicate the existence of institutions that fed large numbers of people, perhaps labourers, often with meat stews, traces of lipids on the pottery and nearby animal bones suggest.
The team found evidence of multiple consecutive periods of occupation at the site, but no signs that it was ultimately abandoned because of violent attacks or a natural disaster. Urbanism did not make another appearance in the region for some 1,500 years. The evidence suggests that the region’s population deliberately dispersed — and that the formation of state-level institutions is not an inevitable trend, the authors write.
(15) EFFECT MASKING COVID. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] From Nature:
What would have happened if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn high-grade masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? A modelling study1 has estimated just how sharply transmission might have dropped.
Determining the effect of masks on viral transmission is difficult, and most studies so far have been affected by limitations such as small sample sizes. To overcome this issue, Richard Sear at the University of Surrey, UK, developed a model of transmission using data from the UK National Health Service COVID-19 app. The app, which ran on mobile phones between 2020 and 2023, logged information about infections and the length of time users came into contact with each other.
Sear built on a previously published analysis2 of 240,000 positive COVID-19 tests and 7 million contacts — instances in which app users were notified that they had been exposed to the virus. He estimated that if everyone in the United Kingdom had worn N95 or FFP2 masks — both highly effective at filtering particles — the rate of COVID-19 transmission would have dropped by a factor of 9.
A Japanese spacecraft has made a daring approach to a discarded rocket in Earth’s orbit.
The mission — undertaken by the satellite technology company Astroscale — intends to eventually remove the 36-foot-long spent rocket stage, but has first tested its ability to rendezvous with the problematic object (one of 27,000 space junk objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit).
The pioneering space endeavor is called Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J.
“Ending 2024 with a historic approach!” Astroscale posted online. “Our ADRAS-J mission has achieved the closest ever approach by a commercial company to space debris, reaching just 15 meters [almost 50 feet] from a rocket upper stage.”
This rocket stage, weighing three tons, is the upper part of the Japanese Space Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) H2A rocket, which launched the Earth observation GOSAT satellite in 2009. The greater space debris removal mission is part of JAXA’s “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project, which seeks a proven way to remove problematic space junk from orbit…
A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.
Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.
The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.
Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences….
…“We’ve long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the ‘magic’ potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough….,” said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement.
Previous research has shown that Deinococcus, known as the most radiant-resistant life-form in the Guinness World Records, can survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. The hardy bacteria can also withstand acid, cold and dehydration.
…For [a] previous study, the team measured the amount of manganese antioxidants in the cells of the bacteria. The researchers found that the amount of radiation that a microorganism could survive was directly related to its amount of manganese antioxidants. So the more manganese antioxidants present, the more resistance to radiation….
Watch and enjoy a wonderful compilation of hilarious bloopers from three hit Pixar films; A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001).
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Sandra Miesel, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) TWO BIDS FOR BRITISH EASTERCON. Many times British Eastercon bids have been put together at the last minute, but the committees interested in running the 2026 and 2027 editions are giving fans plenty of advance notice.
2026. The 2026 Eastercon will be held in Birmingham and named Iridescence if this bid is successful. The committee is led by chair Phil Dyson, joined by Phil Nanson, Caroline Mersey, Virginia Preston, James “JT” Turner, and James Shields.
2027. A bid to hold Eastercon in Glasgow is being advanced at the moment by an unidentified “group of fans — some old hands, some newcomers. Mainly Scottish (but not exclusively).” They also haven’t picked a hotel yet. But they do have a webpage, so, hey! (You used to be able to run a WHOIS search to help unravel these mysteries. Folks are too clever now.)
(2) 2025 GRAMMY NOMINEES. The traditional huge list of Grammy Award nominees was released by the Recording Academy® on November 8. The winners will be revealed in a televised ceremony on February 2, 2025. Click here to see all the nominees. You may spot more works of genre interest – please drop a comment with your additions. Meanwhile, here are the ones I recognized.
Best Song Written for Visual Media
“Can’t Catch Me Now” [From The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes] — Daniel Nigro & Olivia Rodrigo, songwriters (OliviaRodrigo)
Best Opera Recording
Moravec: The Shining – Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Tristan Hallett, Kelly Kaduce & Edward Parks; Blanton Alspaugh, producer (Kansas City Symphony; Lyric Opera of Kansas City Chorus)
Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media (Includes Film And Television)
Dune: Part Two — Hans Zimmer, composer
Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — Pinar Toprak, composer
God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla — Bear McCreary, composer
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 — John Paesano, composer
Star Wars Outlaws — Wilbert Roget, II, composer
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord — Winifred Phillips, composer
(3) SLF 2024 GULLIVER GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation is accepting applications for the 2024 Gulliver Travel Grant through November 30, 2024. For more information and to apply, visit speculativeliterature.org/grants.
Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has been awarded annually to assist writers of speculative literature in their non-academic research. These funds are used to cover airfare, lodging, and other travel expenses. Travel may be domestic or international. Grants may be used for travel to take place at any point in the following year. Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant.
…So keen is Stephenson’s anticipatory knack, he’s been hired at companies like Blue Origin and Magic Leap just to sit around and think—working at the latter, an augmented reality startup, his title was “Chief Futurist.” It’s therefore surprising that, twenty pages into his latest excursion (then fifty, then seventy), the speculative takes a backseat to history.
The novel, Polostan, is a detective story set mainly in the 1930s, in a slew of cities and rural outposts scattered across the US and USSR. Unlike Stephenson’s previous opuses, which resemble multiple books sandwiched into gigantic tomes—Cryptonomicon and Reamde both clock in at over 1,000 pages—this one is slim, about a third of that size, and boasts a correspondingly streamlined plot….
… Polostan, the first novel in a cycle entitled Bomb Light, features a succession of increasingly intimidating nuclear brainiacs, up to and including the physicist Niels Bohr, whose appearance produces a classic Stephenson cramming session: Chadwich, Joliot, Curie, the discovery of the neutron. “The chain of reasoning,” Stephenson writes, “though long, wasn’t that difficult to follow.” (If you say so!)…
… Stephenson’s scientific narrative shines in a meeting of upper-echelon Russian secret police. It’s the winter of 1934, and they’ve called in some young experts to brief them on atomic physics outside of a labor camp in frigid Magnitogorsk, an industrial town 1,000 miles east of Moscow. “We live in this intermediate layer of medium-sized nuclei that are stable enough to form complicated molecules that support life. Bellow us, massive nuclei are decaying in a hellish sea of lava. Above us, light nuclei are combining to make starlight…”…
In contention: The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year 2024
Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them In this updated edition of Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them, the city’s archaeologist takes you on a whirlwind tour of Beantown, including the delights of the Lemuel Clap House.
Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western The mass media discussed in Hell-Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western includes “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, “BioShock Infinite” and A A Carr’s erotic vampire/monster slayer western Eye Killers.
How to Dungeon Master Parenting Shelly Mazzanoble invites mums and dads to “level up” their child-rearing in How to Dungeon Master Parenting, arguing lessons learned from “Dungeons & Dragons” can help them “win at their most challenging role yet”.
Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail John Turner wrestles with the elements, self-doubt and ageing while he hikes the nearly 2,200-mile path from Georgia to Maine in Killing the Buddha on the Appalachian Trail.
Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement Judith Houck’s Looking through the Speculum: Examining the Women’s Health Movement is an “eye-opening” examination of the struggles and successes of “bringing feminist dreams into clinical spaces”.
The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire “A wild upstream adventure”, raved the New York Post about The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire—a “high-stakes cocktail of business, crime… and the dilemmas of conservation”.
Respondents from across the industry earned more on average in 2023 than in 2022. The median compensation, which includes base salary plus bonuses and commissions, rose 7.3% over 2022, to $75,000. That increase could be due in part to the success unions and other employee groups had in getting major New York publishers to raise entry-level pay beginning in 2022. Indeed, the share of respondents earning less than $50,000 per year fell to 12% in 2023, from 17% in 2022….
AI Rising
This year’s survey found a huge jump in the percentage of employees who said their companies are using AI: 53%, compared to 23% in 2022. But like everyone else, publishing employees are uneasy about the new technology. Only 25% of survey respondents believe AI will have a positive impact on their jobs, while 40% believe it will have a negative impact. Respondents were even more concerned about how AI will affect the industry in general: only 13% said they believe AI will change publishing for the better, while 56% think the technology will make it worse…
(7) PLAINTIFF WHIFFS AGAINST OPENAI IN COPYRIGHT ACTION. [Item by Francis Hamit.] The Federal Bench hates copyright cases because of their complexity. AI is copyright poison. “Will AI Copyright Claims Keep Standing After New Ruling?” asks Copyright Lately.
…After TransUnion [v. Ramirez, in 2021], legal experts warned that this break from precedent could have sweeping effects, particularly for statutes that provide for statutory damages without proof of actual harm—like the Copyright Act. For copyright claims involving AI, TransUnion could also make it significantly harder for copyright owners to bring claims against AI companies for using their creative works in training data—at least without specific examples of infringing output.
That scenario began to unfold last week, as TransUnion played a starring role in the dismissal of Raw Story Media v. OpenAI (read here). Southern District of New York Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show any concrete harm caused by OpenAI’s alleged removal of copyright management information from their articles, which they claim were then used to train ChatGPT’s language model. If Judge McMahon’s reasoning is adopted—or even extended—by other courts, AI-related copyright claims could find themselves on shaky ground, facing stricter standing requirements across a broader range of cases.
Raw Story Media v. OpenAI
In the Raw StoryMedia case, two digital news organizations, Raw Story and AlterNet, claimed that OpenAI violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by using their copyrighted articles—stripped of copyright management information (CMI), such as author names and copyright notices—to train ChatGPT. The plaintiffs argued that this violated section 1202(b) of the DMCA, which prohibits the removal or alteration of CMI when the party knows that doing so will facilitate future infringement.
But Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the case, finding that the plaintiffs failed to allege a “concrete injury-in-fact”—a requirement for Article III standing, which is a threshold question in every federal case…
… The Raw Story Media ruling, with its reliance on TransUnion, raises significant questions about the future of copyright law in the context of AI. If other courts follow Judge McMahon’s lead, copyright owners may find it increasingly difficult to bring cases involving AI training data, particularly if they can’t show concrete harm from the outset.
For now, copyright holders may need to rethink their approach to AI-related claims. Gathering clear evidence of actual harm—such as instances where AI models produce outputs that closely mirror expressive elements from the original copyrighted material—may be essential. In any event, plaintiffs will need to show a real-world impact from the AI’s use of their work or risk seeing their claims fall short.
(8) SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE: SCIENCE OF SCIENCE FICTION AND ST:TNG.[Item by David Goldfarb.] The final week of the current “off-season” in LearnedLeague saw two SFF-related One-Day Special quizzes.
Science of Science Fiction 2 had 979 players; I got 10 right and came in 32nd. (Never having read any Alastair Reynolds hurt me.)
Star Trek: The Next Generation had 1412 players; I got 10 right and came in 632nd(!). (Evidently LL players [or LLamas, as we sometimes call ourselves] really remember this show.)
Course Dates: March 10, 2025, to November 17, 2025
Whether you’ve outlined extensively or are navigating by instinct, Clarion West’s nine-month virtual workshop is designed to guide you from conception to completion of your novel.
Led by author and Six-Week Workshop instructor Samit Basu, with the support of the Clarion West team, this program is built around finding your unique process.
(10) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Born November 11, 1922 — Kurt Vonnegut. (Died 2007.)
By Paul Weimer: My first encounter with Kurt Vonnegut was not actually through his work, but through a movie. Not the movie of Slaughterhouse Five, his best known (an adaptation of perhaps his best novel), although that would come later. No, it came, in all places, in the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back To School. In that movie, Dangerfield, a successful businessman who doesn’t have a college degree, goes to college in order to inspire his son, who is not doing well at the university. But Dangerfield’s character figures he can buy his way to a grade. So, when he needs to do a paper on the work of Kurt Vonnegut…he hires Kurt Vonnegut, who shows up in a cameo in the movie. Dangerfield’s tactic backfires, when his professor tells him “whoever wrote this doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut”
Kurt Vonnegut
Friends, I didn’t know who Kurt Vonnegut was at the time. My high school had not taught him, and I had missed him in my still growing education into SF. But, if you know me by now, I had to know who he was. And so I read Slaughterhouse Five, and Breakfast of Champions, and a variety of other things by him. His biting and unrelenting humor has stayed with me ever since, and “So it goes” is part of my vocabulary.
Speaking of which, funny thing, when I got around to reading Pournelle and Niven’s Inferno, I was shocked and surprised to find that Vonnegut had a particularly prominent place in hell. I think that the reason they put him there as they did (Vonnegut was still alive when they wrote Inferno) is because Vonnegut (like, say, Margaret Atwood or Joyce Carol Oates) vociferously and vocally denied he wrote science fiction, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I am certain that Vonnegut wrote science fiction, but to put him in hell for not saying so…badly done, indeed. But…so it goes.
…But can we just say how relieved we are that the new look at Marvel’s Thunderbolts*—dropped this afternoon at D23 Brazil—finally, kinda, addresses that stupid asterisk in the title? Marvel added the mark to the movie’s name a few months back, and it’s been irritating the hell out of us; from the trailer, it’s apparently just intended as a joke, denoting the black ops super-team’s overall rejection of the goofy name slapped on them by enthusiastic member Red Guardian. So that’s a relief….
Ethan Hunt is back in action, and his latest mission officially has a name: Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning.
The first trailer for the eighth film in the massively successful spy franchise dropped Monday. With it came the new title, new characters, and a look at more insane stunts by star Tom Cruise in Ethan’s latest mission.
As Ethan hangs from planes and explores submarines, he’s told that “the fate of every living soul is your responsibility,” and that there are consequences for the fact that he refuses to sacrifice those he loves. But as Ethan says, “I need you to trust me … one last time.”
Wicked movie merchandising turned into a nightmare for Mattel over the weekend as news broke that a web address listed on the packaging for character dolls took consumers to an adult pornographic site.
The toy company apologized later Sunday…. “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this. Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children. Consumers who already have the product are advised to discard the product packaging or obscure the link and may contact Mattel Customer Service for further information.”
By Sunday afternoon, the entire Mattel-manufactured doll collection had been pulled at Target, and the products with the incorrect website address were being taken off the shelves at other retailers.
But others hope this mistake has only added value in the eyes of discriminating collectors:
…The character dolls being sold with the erroneous address include Grande’s Glinda and Erivo’s Elphaba. The products with misprinted websites have already popped up on eBay for $100 to $800. (The dolls retail for $24.99 to $39.99.)…
ON A RURAL ROAD IN Western Australia, tucked back next to a driveway, there is a traditional London police call box. If you watched the television series Doctor Who, you might suspect that it’s bigger on the inside. This a full-size replica of the TARDIS, the time and space travel machine hidden inside a call box. This one is electrified, with lights and a working control panel. Be careful of the button labeled, “Don’t press this.”
The replica TARDIS is the work of Narrogin local Rob Shepherd, who originally built it as a bus shelter for his daughter. But the distinctive blue call box took on a life of its own and has become something of a pilgrimage site for fans of the show.
Shepherd used plans for a 1947 London police box to design the bus shelter, which went up in 2018. In the years that it has been up on the roadside, the TARDIS has drawn visitors not just from Australia, but all over the world. Shepherd and his family check the guest book inside every time they catch the bus to see where their ever-growing list of visitors have come from…
[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, David Langford, Francis Hamit, David Goldfarb, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (Not Werdna) who may know what the title means.]
(1) PUFNSTUF FOR BREAKFAST. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] The ninety-nine-year-old Los Angeles Breakfast Club hosted a breakfast for Sid Krofft today. At age ninety-five Sid was very gregarious, and still does a Sunday podcast. Special guests included H.R. Pufnstuf and Johnny Whittaker.
Sid talked about his career as a puppeteer, starting at age 15 in Burlesque. People that crossed his path, from Mae West and Liberace to Jim Nabors and the Queen of England. We forget that along with his psychedelic kids show he and his brother also produced Donnie & Marie.
The Pufnstuf costume was made by a cosplayer, a young lady. [Click for larger images.]
H.R. Pufnstuf bannerSid Krofft.H.R. with John King Tarpinian and Silvia ManciniJohn King Tarpinian, Johnnie Whittaker, and Sylvia Mancini. Whittaker’s credits include Krofft’s “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” series.
(2) BEWARE ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’ SPOILER. Like, stop before you read this Variety headline!! “George R.R. Martin Calls Out ‘House of the Dragon’ Changes, Maelor Cut”. Martin wrote – then deleted – a Not A Blog post titled “Beware the Butterflies” detailing his criticism of a change to his story made by the House of Dragons series. The Google cache file is still available.
…It is a bloody, brutal scene, no doubt. How not? An innocent child is being butchered in front of his mother.
I still believe the scene in the book is stronger. The readers have the right of that. The two killers are crueler in the book. I thought the actors who played the killers on the show were excellent… but the characters are crueler, harder, and more frightening in FIRE & BLOOD. In the show, Blood is a gold cloak. In the book, he is a former gold cloak, stripped of his office for beating a woman to death. Book Blood is the sort of man who might think making a woman choose which of her sons should die is amusing, especially when they double down on the wanton cruelty by murdering the boy she tries to save. Book Cheese is worse too; he does not kick a dog, true, but he does not have a dog, and he’s the one who tells Maelor that his mom wants him head. I would also suggest that Helaena shows more courage, more strength in the book, by offering her own own life to save her son. Offering a piece of jewelry is just not the same.
As I saw it, the “Sophie’s Choice” aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral. I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments on line, most of the fans seemed to agree.
When Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons. I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit. And Ryan had what seemed to be practical reasons for it; they did not want to deal with casting another child, especially a two-year old toddler. Kids that young will inevitably slow down production, and there would be budget implications. Budget was already an issue on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, it made sense to save money wherever we could. Moreover, Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince Maelor, simply postponing him. Queen Helaena could still give birth to him in season three, presumably after getting with child late in season two. That made sense to me, so I withdrew my objections and acquiesced to the change.
I still love the episode, and the Blood and Cheese sequence overall. Losing the “Helaena’s Choice” beat did weaken the scene, but not to any great degree. Only the book readers would even notice its absence; viewers who had never read FIRE & BLOOD would still find the scenes heart-rending. Maelor did not actually DO anything in the scene, after all. How could he? He was only two years old.
There is another aspect to the removal of the young princeling, however.
Those of you who hate spoilers shouldSTOP READING HERE.
Iceland’s biennial Halldór Laxness International Literary Prize is to be awarded to Salman Rushdie on September 13.
This is a €15,000 prize (US$16,598) designed to highlight internationally recognized authors whose work contributes to “narrative art, echoing the rationale of the Swedish Academy when Halldór Laxness received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.”…
…In its rationale for the selection of Rushdie as the awards fourth recipient, the jury writes that the author’s books are “captivating, philosophical, and enlightening stories for readers willing to explore new worlds.
“For readers around the world, Rushdie’s image—having continued to write his novels despite the fatwa issued by the Iranian clerical regime following the publication of The Satanic Verses and the assassination attempt he faced in the United States two years ago—has become a symbol of courage and unyielding will.”…
(4) APPLY FOR SLF WORKING CLASS WRITERS GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation will be accepting applications for the 2024 Working Class Writers Grant from September 1 through September 30, 2024. Full information at the SLF website.
Since 2013, the $1,000 Working Class Writers Grant has been awarded annually to speculative fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, who have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction due to financial barriers which make it hard to access the writing world. Such lack of access might include an inability to purchase a computer, books, and tuition, or to attend conventions or workshops. Often, these writers, many of whom work more than one job, have less time to write. The SLF seeks to bring more of these marginalized voices into speculative fiction.
Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant.
Around 40 Hollywood writers have joined a hotel union boycott of two Los Angeles hotels, the Cameo Beverly Hills by Hilton and the Beverly Hills Marriott.
The Good Place creator Mike Schur, Emily in Paris writer and co-executive producer Grant Sloss, The Simpsons writer and executive producer Ian Maxtone-Graham and Abbott Elementary supervising producer and writer Brittani Nichols are among the scribes that joined the campaign, spearheaded by the major Los Angeles-area hospitality union Unite Here Local 11. One Day at a Time co-showrunner Mike Royce, Halt and Catch Fire writer and executive producer Angelina Burnett and Two Sentence Horror Stories writer Liz Alper also joined the boycott on Labor Day weekend.
Unite Here Local 11 initiated the campaign against the two Remington Hospitality-operated properties last month after the Cameo’s existing union contract expired and the union and employer were unable to come to an agreement. (The Cameo was formerly the Mr. C Beverly Hills.) In early August the union also filed a wage theft complaint with the California Labor Commission, alleging that housekeepers were performing unpaid work prior to their shifts starting and that workers were not able to take mandated rest breaks due to the volume of work….
The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO.
This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What’s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we’d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.
… All this is ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions. There have been humorous calls to storm Area 51. And after the storming of the Capitol in 2021, this now looks like an increasingly dangerous possibility.
Too much background noise about UFOs and UAPs can also get in the way of legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology, the science dealing with such matters, has a far less effective publicity machine than UFOlogy….
(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. [Item by Steven French.] Some interesting essays on futures, world building and the imagination: Imaginary Papers, Issue 19, a quarterly newsletter from Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. Philipp Kürten discusses For All Mankind. Chinelo Onwualu recalls pop culture’s “Reality Crisis in the 1990s”. Christopher Cokinos describes taking part in a simulated Moon mission.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Anniversary: Xena: Warrior Princess (1995)
Twenty-nine years ago Xena: Warrior Princess first aired in syndication by MCA TV (which did it for the first two years of this followed by Universal Television Enterprises doing so for a year and Studios USA Television Distribution doing so for the rest of the run). Before ending its six years run, there would be one hundred and thirty-four roughly forty-eight minute episodes.
It was created by John Schulian and Robert Tapert. Schulian’s previous genre credits included writing for Tremors. Tapert, of course, created Hercules: The Legendary Journeys that same year, along with Christian Williams. Busy year for New Zealand series production, eh?
The executive producers were R.J. Stewart and Sam Raimi. The former, other than co-creating Xena, just created Cleopatra 2525; Raimi of course has a long list including directing the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and the Evil Dead franchise.
The real reason watching was and is now if you catch it on the streaming services now, Xena as performed in that amazing leather outfit by Lucy Lawless, and companion Gabrielle as played by Renee O’Connor. Their adventures episode in and episode out were always worth watching.
A number of fascinating secondary cast were here as well. Bruce Campbell, Karl Urban, Kevin Smith, Alexandra Tydings — all these performers were fun.
NBC announced a reboot, but the Gods were merciful, and it got cancelled.
As the name suggests, The Legendary Lynx is the stuff of legends—a 70s feminist superhero classic whose pages were long believed to be lost in a labyrinthine conspiracy of murder, drugs, and intellectual property theft.
Or at least, that’s how the fictional comic book is framed in the pages of Secret Identity, Alex Segura’s pulpy crime thriller about the 70s comic book industry. The book’s twisty noir plot centers around a queer Latina woman working as a secretary at a comic book company who has to hide her identity to order to get recognized as an actual writer with her book, The Legendary Lynx. But a few behind-the-scenes betrayals cause more complications for poor Carmen Valdez, leaving her comic pages and identity unknown for years (in the story’s world, anyway.)
Real-life author Alex Segura has teamed up with artist Sandy Jarrell to create a metafictional “reprint” of the “long lost” issues of The Legendary Lynx from within the world of Secret Identity.
“…THE LEGENDARY LYNX was created by writer Harvey Stern and artist Doug Detmer, two creators who died under mysterious circumstances before and shortly after the series was first published. Though originally credited solely to Stern as the writer, diligent research has uncovered that Stern co-created the script and story to the Lynx’s seminal debut by renowned novelist and writer Carmen Valdez. For the first time ever, she is given proper credit in this volume.
“(But in reality, ‘The Legendary Lynx’ is no reprint. Crafted by LA Times Book Prize-winning novelist Alex Segura in his 2022 work, ‘Secret Identity’ – a story that continues in the follow-up, ‘Alter Ego,’ – and brought to life by artist Sandy Jarrell’s masterful artwork, this series blurs the lines between fiction and reality in the best way possible – the remastered pages of this forgotten gem, restored to its former glory and presented anew for readers hungry for adventure.)…”
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In my childhood brain, little had as much magical allure as the wardrobe through which four young siblings travel in these stories. And I can still conjure the taste of my own version of Turkish Delight; I didn’t know that the stuff actually existed until years later, and its flavor was far more disappointing than what my mind had imagined.
Book you’ve faked reading:
Any Harry Potter book. Easier than admitting the truth and having fellow parents at bygone kiddie parties look at me aghast, shocked that I was not a member of the J.K. Rowling cognoscenti.
Book you’re afraid to read again for fear that it’d be a letdown:
Dune by Frank Herbert. As a child, I was taken in by the sandworms and magical spice and political intrigue–the earnest gloom and doom of it all. Perhaps best left undisturbed, frozen as a memory from long ago.
Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells.
But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom?
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species Pleurotus eryngii (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface.
Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom’s electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device’s movements.
“By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment,” says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell….
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 korydg.]
The SLF is one of 49 nonprofit literary arts organizations across the United States awarded grants to support projects that build organizational capacity and ensure greater sustainability.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction by encouraging promising new writers, assisting established writers, facilitating the work of quality magazines and small presses in the genre, and developing a greater public appreciation of speculative fiction.
The National Book Foundation is giving a total of $350,000 in capacity-building grants to organizations based in 22 states and Washington, DC, and with annual budgets that range from under $20,000 to over $4,000,000. Applications were reviewed by an independent grantmaking panel composed of Lilly Gonzalez, Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival; Michael Holtmann, Executive Director & Publisher at the Center for the Art of Translation; and Lisa Willis, Executive Director of Cave Canem. Final grant decisions were made by the National Book Foundation and approved by a committee of the NBF Board of Directors.
The National Book Foundation is the presenter of the National Book Awards.
The SLF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. It is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Village of Oak Park, Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is accepting applications for the 2024 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants beginning July 1 through July 31, 2024.
Since 2014, the SLF has offered two diversity-centered grants intended to foster the creation of speculative fiction work rich in diversity. Writers may apply for either or both grants.
The $500 Diverse Writers grant is intended to support speculative fiction writers from underrepresented and underprivileged groups — such as writers of color, women, queer writers, disabled writers, etc. — whose marginalized identities may present additional obstacles in the writing and publishing process.
The $500 Diverse Worlds grant is intended for work that best presents a diverse world, regardless of the writer’s background.
For more information and to apply, visit speculativeliterature.org/grants. Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant.
Launched in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the Speculative Literature Foundation addresses historical inequities in access to literary opportunities for marginalized writers. The SLF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. For more information, visit speculativeliterature.org.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Village of Oak Park, Illinois Arts Council Agency, National Endowment for the Arts and Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.
Minnesota Book Award finalist Andrew DeYoung (2023) moderated a discussion between all four 2024 finalists in contention for the Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction: C.M. Alongi, author of Citadel (Blackstone Publishing); Tashia Hart, author of Native Love Jams (self-published); Naomi Kritzer, author of Liberty’s Daughter (Fairwood Press); Emma Törzs, author of Ink Blood Sister Scribe (William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers). The Minnesota Book Awards are sponsored by Education Minnesota; Macalester College is the 2024 category sponsor for the Genre Fiction category.
…This relatability is part of what has made The Murderbot Diaries so beloved. Golden Voice Kevin R. Free, who has narrated all of the unabridged audiobooks in the series, says that fans regularly reach out to him to tell him that they’ve listened over and over again. “When people say, ‘It’s comforting to me when I listen to this,’ I just feel so happy that I’m bringing people comfort.” Free stresses that he’s also a fan of the books, and he’s quick to give full credit to Wells….
(3) APPLY FOR SLF OLDER WRITERS GRANT. The Speculative Literature Foundation will accept applications for the 2024 Older Writers Grant from May1 through May 31. The complete guidelines are here.
Since 2004, the $1,000 Older Writers Grant has been awarded annually to writers who are at least fifty years of age at the time of application to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level. These funds may be used as each writer determines will best assist their work. This grant, as with all SLF grants, is intended to help writers working with speculative literature.
Grant applications are open to all: you do not need to be a member of SLF to apply for or receive a grant. Launched in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the Speculative Literature Foundation addresses historical inequities in access to literary opportunities for marginalized writers. Our staff and board are committed to representing racial, gender, and class diversity at all levels of our organization. This commitment is at the heart of what the Speculative Literature Foundation stands for: equal access to create and advance science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature. We strive to enable writers at any stage of their career and of any age, any ethnicity, any gender expression, from any location and of any economic or social status, who want to learn about, or create within, the speculative arts. The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit.
(4) NEW VOLUME IN THE TAFF LIBRARY. Sue Mason’s Into the Wide Purple Yonder: A Fan Artist in America, a report of her westbound TAFF trip to the USA and the 2000 Chicago Worldcon (Chicon 2000), was published in 2023 by Alison Scott, illustrated with many photographs and artwork by Sue herself. David Langford says it now has been “Added to the TAFF site with the kind permission of Sue and Alison on 24 April 2024.” Cover artwork by Sue Mason.
Science fiction has been warning us about fascism for decades — so why haven’t we listened? How did Nazis become just another monster in our stories, like werewolves or cyborgs? Plus we talk about the new wave of book censorship with Maggie Tokuda-Hall, co-founder of the new organization Authors Against Book Bans.
First Appearance: Thor (Vol. 1) #346, by writer/penciler Walt Simonson, inker Terry Austin, colorist Christie Scheele, and letterer John Workman Jr.
Created by the frost giants, this ancient weapon has limitless power stored within it. The Casket of Ancient Winters can unleash a devastating icy wind that can consume entire worlds. It often gets forgotten because it has been stored in Odin‘s treasure room safely for years.
The Casket of Ancient Winters briefly appeared in the MCU. Loki used it to help the frost giants take over Asgard. His plan was unsuccessful, and the artifact remained locked in Odin’s vault, but it is an endlessly powerful tool that has been seemingly forgotten by Marvel fans.
…Geisler was known for her snark and humor, from her cherished pocket constitution to her in-class commentary. In her beloved 1980s Mazda GLC, Geisler was a vibrant presence on campus, one that worked to push her students just as much as she worked to foster their passion for journalism.
Edwards, who had a class with Geisler in the spring of 2020 at the start of the coronavirus in 2020, said her spirit was pivotal to maintaining community and morale throughout Zoom classes.
“Through the transition to virtual learning, Deb made it so all about the students. She put her students before herself, she again always found time to make us laugh. She was very, very flexible. She really was just great,” said Edwards.
Geisler was heavily involved in the Suffolk and Boston communities. At Suffolk, she was the adviser to The Suffolk Voice. Her passion for all things science fiction led her to chair Noreascon 4, the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention, along with her involvement in conventions through the years….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 24, 1930 — Richard Donner. (Died 2021.) Tonight we have Richard Donner who has entered the Twilight Zone, errr, the Birthday spotlight. As a genre producer, he’s responsible for some of our most recognizable productions.
His first such works was on The Twilight Zone (hence my joke above in case you didn’t get it) as he produced six episodes there including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. He’d go on to work in The Sixties on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart!, and The Wild Wild West. He closed out this period by producing Danger Island (which I’ve never heard of) where, and I quote IMDB, “Archaeologists are being pursued by pirates around an island in the South Pacific. On this island, various adventures await them.” It’s at least genre adjacent, isn’t it?
Richard Donner in 1979. Photo by Alan Light.
So forty-eight years ago and then two years later, he directs not one but two now considered classic films in two very different genres. First out was The Omen with an impressive cast far too long to list here that got mixed reviews but had an audience that loved and which birthed (that’s deliberate) a franchise and garnered two Oscar’s nominations.
Next out was, oh guess, go ahead guess, Superman. Yes, it would win a much-deserved Hugo at Seacon ’79. DC being DC the film had a very, very difficult time coming to be and that was true of who directed the film with several sources noting that Donner may have been much as the fourth or fifth choice to do so. Or more.
So what did he do post-Superman? Well something happened during the production of Superman II and he was replaced as director by Richard Lester during principal photography was Lester receiving sole directorial credit. That being most likely tensions, and that was the polite word, which he had with all of the producers concerning the escalating production budget and production schedule. Mind you both films were being shot simultaneously.
If you’re so inclined, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released oddly enough when the film came out so I’m assume he had the legal right to do so which I find damn odd.
He did go on to direct The Goonies. Now I really don’t think it’s genre, but I will say that the treasure map and the premise of treasure make it a strong candidate for genre adjacent, wouldn’t you say? Truly a great film!
He went on to direct one of my favorite Bill Murray films, Scrooged. The Suck Fairy says she still likes that film and will agree to watch it every Christmas as long as there’s lots of hot chocolate to drink
His last work was a genre one, Timeline, about a group of archaeologists who travel back to fourteenth century France, based on a Michael Crichton thriller.
(10) SUN-RELATED SFF ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] There was a One-Day Special quiz about the Sun recently. Most of it isn’t relevant to our interests, but there were two questions involving SFF:
4. In the Marvel Universe, Brazilian mutant Roberto da Costa draws powers from the Sun that include super strength, flight, and the ability to generate blasts of energy. What superhero name does da Costa use as a member of both the X-Men and the New Mutants?
Only 17% of players knew this was “Sunspot”.
7. The 1953 science fiction story “The Golden Apples of the Sun” follows a spaceship tasked with approaching the Sun and trying to literally capture a sample of its material within a giant metal cup operated by a robot hand. The title of the story was taken from a line in the 1899 poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” Name either the author of the sci-fi story (who is American) or the writer of the namesake poem (who is Irish).
45% of players got this one. The poet was William Butler Yeats; I won’t insult Filers by giving the name of the SF author.
In the original version of the popular board game Settlers of Catan, players start on an undeveloped island and are encouraged to “fulfill your manifest destiny.” To win you have to collect resources and develop, claiming land by building settlements, cities, and roads.
A new version of the board game, Catan: New Energies, introduces a 21st-century twist — pollution. Expand responsibly or lose. In the new version, modern Catan needs energy. To get that energy players have to build power plants, and those plants can run on renewable energy or fossil fuels. Power plants operated on fossil fuels allow you to build faster but also create more pollution. Too much pollution causes catastrophes….
…This week, 38North published an article revealing that a North Korean animation studio was believed to have worked on the upcoming anime Dahlia in Bloom. This is despite sanctions currently being observed forbidding businesses from working with state-owned North Korean companies. An analysis of leaked files shows that the North Korean studio was likely April 26 Animation Studio, also known as SEK Studio. 38North adds that the studio is North Korea’s leading animation studio, producing many series for domestic TV.
Analysis of the files has also revealed that instructions in Chinese were provided to the North Korean studio, with 38North adding that a Chinese company likely acted as an intermediary between the North Korean studio, Dahlia in Bloom‘s animation studio and others. Other animated series the studio is believed to have worked on are HBO’s Iyanu, Child of Wonder and Invincible Season 3. Files have also been identified that may suggest a relationship with the Japanese animation studio Ekachi Epilka (Demon Lord, Retry!).
Despite its many risks, outsourcing in the Japanese anime industry is often done due to significantly lower labor costs.…
Shane White is an artist, and a mighty good one. I've hired him to ink stuff before (see illo), and now he's posted an entire video about inking. It is very educational. The next time I see him, I will ask for his autograph. (https://t.co/weIx1hhKBl) pic.twitter.com/Lhx7iQC6Gx
[Thanks to Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Michael J. Walsh, David Goldfarb, Daniel Dern, 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 OGH.]
