Tag Archives: Star Wars

Pixel Scroll 6/7/25 His Soul Swooned Slowly As He Heard The Pixels Falling Faintly Through The Universe 

Posted on by
28

(0) A bit short because I’m out of time – need to go watch the Nebula Awards.

(1) SFWA INFINITY AWARD 2025. Dune author Frank Herbert (1920-1986) is SFWA’s Infinity Award honoree.

…Now in its third year, the SFWA Infinity Award serves to highlight the achievements of creators who did not live long enough to be considered for the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, but who achieved a distinct and tremendous legacy in science fiction and fantasy…

(2) RENAISSANCE BRANDING. At Paul Krugman’s Substack newsletter – “Inventing the Renaissance: Ada Palmer”.

…I think I first began reading Ada Palmer through her blog Ex Urbe, which is about, among other things, history, philosophy and gelato. Her day job is being a history professor at Chicago, but she’s also the author of a thought-provoking quartet of science fiction novels.

Ada was part of a panel we held at the Graduate Center on social science and science fiction, and has a new, fascinating book called “Inventing the Renaissance.” And I thought, correctly, that it would be fun to talk about it!…

…KRUGMAN: I should say, I really want to come back to this, that none of this would work unless we did see a lot of stuff in this Renaissance that we admire. There’s some damn good painting and architecture and innovative political thinking and a lot of other things going on. I think every professional historian now dumps on the notion of the dark ages, but if we were talking about the period that we used to call the dark ages, nobody would be claiming it, and in recreating the society of 11th century France, it’s the fact that the Renaissance left us things that we value that makes it.

PALMER: But I mean, there are two reasons that it seems to have left us so many more. One is that the rhetoric of the Renaissance as a golden age kicks in even during the Renaissance itself. It’s the Renaissance that invents itself as a golden age. And immediately afterward, so as early as the 17th and the 18th centuries, having Renaissance stuff made you part of this idea of a new golden age, it made you legitimate. Therefore, if you had Renaissance stuff, you kept your Renaissance stuff. If you had older stuff, you were like, “we’ll knock that medieval church down and build a new church, we don’t care, but the Renaissance one, we’re keeping.”…

(3) SO YOU WANT TO WRITE STAR WARS BOOKS? Delilah S. Dawson has an interesting thread about “How to Write IP” – basically, media-tie in fiction — here on Bluesky.

(4) LUKE SKYWALKER AS ‘NARRATIVE GAFFER TAPE’. [Item by Steven French.] “Mark Hamill has finally ruled out a return as Luke Skywalker. Can Star Wars survive without him?” asks the Guardian.

…Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker has been Star Wars’ ultimate backup plan for at least half a decade. The original trilogy has faded into the distance, and the movies set in that galaxy far, far away have become so poor in recent years that we’d all rather watch Andor. But there was always the option of plugging in Hamill – a sort of human Star Wars USB stick, primed to conjure up 1970s vibes as required. Not quite getting your fill of Force nostalgia? Here’s Luke tutoring Baby Yoda in The Book of Boba Fett. And here he is again, whinging about past mistakes in The Last Jedi. It may not quite have been Binary Sunset, or Yoda lifting the X-wing on Dagobah. But for a few shimmering, quite-possibly-digitally-retouched moments, it felt like we were back in the real Star Wars again…

(5) NO BLEEP, SHERLOCK. Camestros Felapton’s review starts by making an interest connection: “I’m enjoying the Murderbot TV show”.

I’m five episodes in to the series now but each episode is short (about half an hour including credits etc), so 5 episodes is closer to two and a bit episodes of most streaming shows. Short is an interesting choice and with the episodes ending on cliff hangers the show has this surprising similarity to classic Doctor Who.

Obviously Murderbot itself is the largely unlike the Doctor (it is not trying to involve itself, it very much doesn’t want to be there and is not insatiably curious) but prior to this TV adaptation I hadn’t really thought of Doctor Who and Murderbot having any more commonality than being science fiction. However, if we think about Holmesian detective fiction, in which the stories revolve around a central character who is, in late Victorian terms eccentric and in modern terms neuro-atypical, we see the similarity of form even when the template becomes as different as the TV show Monk and the TV show House. …

(6) SCI-FI LONDON FILM FEST PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED, [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Sci-Fi London Film Fest is where ‘What if’ meets ‘WTF’. It runs Thursday 19th – Sunday 22nd June 2025 at the Picturehouse Finsbury Park just next to the joint rail/underground(tube) station’s west exit (SE England Filers see map below). (And there is a coffee shop bang opposite, while the Picture House has its own bar… So, all the basics there.)

This year’s line up sees a dozen feature films including a few UK premieres, plus there is a feature-length documentary on The Rocky Horror Show with the indelible Richard O’Brien.

As ever, the programme sees six sessions, each of several, SF short films. These are invariably rather good as if one short does not tickle your fancy then there will be another along in a few minutes time.

Also as ever, there will be the 48 Hour Film Challenge Awards. This is where budding short-film makers are given a line or two of dialogue and told to include a specific prop and then given two days to make a short SF film. If this year’s ceremony runs true to form, the short-list winning entries will be screened and then the winner announced. Challenge entrants get into the Award ceremony for free, but good luck everyone else as this is a popular event! (Past winners have included Gareth (Monsters, Rogue One, The Creator) Edwards, whose short ‘Factory Farm’ won the 2008 48-Hour Challenge.)

And then there are the free extras which as is usual includes a quiz, plus there is a creators’ signing session, an SF art display in the cinema’s bar, a DVD swop session, and a karaoke session.

Attendees can either pay individually for each film or short sessions, or if seeing nine or more of the score of screenings, there is an all-event pass (equivalent to attending membership and works out as a 50%+ discount). And, of course, there is a printed, full-colour programme book for everyone attending even if only for a single screening. (Yes, and they didn’t need a WSFS constitution to do it.)

For those for whom a long commute is not on, there are a number of hotels nearby including the Maldron Hotel Finsbury Park.

Now, SF Film Fests are important, though you would never have guessed it from Worldcons the past decade or so that have seen their film programmes whither (Glasgow 2024 was the fist British Worldcon not to screen any films!) and it is a long way form the excellent, three streams of films at the 2010 Worldcon. Yet, average Worldcon regulars greatly enjoy films as is evidenced by the numbers both nominating for and voting in the Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form Hugo Award category: it is one of the most popular Hugo categories! It is also further evidenced by over 42% of the 1,260 Glasgow Worldcon members voting to create a new Independent Film Hugo category! (Which makes Glasgow’s decision to abandon the film programme all the more puzzling.) What film fests do do is to enable SF fans to see offerings that don’t often make general release or the streaming platforms, not to mention enable fans access some of the vast wealth of non-Anglophone cinematic SF: they wave the flag for diversity in cinematic SF. Fests truly are worthy of your support.

And if Worldcon-runners and SMOFs wail that putting on a film programme is too difficult, then for goodness sake, they might get in touch with their own regional film fest organisers. Give them a budget and allow them to trail their own event at the start of each film they screen and let them get on with it. Simples.

Meanwhile, London area Filers might like to meet up at this year’s SFL Science Fiction Quiz (19.00 Saturday 21st June)?

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

July 6, 1957 — Bugs Bunny’s “What’s Opera, Doc?”

Sixty-eight  years ago, one of the very best Warner Bros. cartoons ever done was released,  Bugs Bunny’s “What’s Opera, Doc?”

It was directed by Chuck Jones as written by Michael Maltese, whose longest association not unsurprisingly was with Warner Bros. Cartoons, though he did work with other animators such as MGM Cartoons and Hanna-Barbera. MGM Cartoons is best known for their Tom and Jerry cartoons; the latter for The Jetsons. 

BEWARE! SPOILERS! I MEAN IT! IF YOU’VE NOT SEEN IT GO AWAY! 

In this cartoon, Elmer is chasing Bugs through a number of Richard Wagner’s operas, including Der Ring des Nibelungen, Der Fliegende Holländer, and Tannhäuser. Fudd is dressed as Siegfried and Bugs as Brunhilda to start it off and then, well, let’s just say it’s just it gets even more manic. Really manic. 

Bugs is apparently dead at the end of the cartoon as Fudd carries him off but he suddenly breaks the fourth wall and raises his head to face the audience while remarking, “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

END SPOILERS

Given it has only two characters, it won’t be any surprise to those familiar with these cartoons theater there’s only two voice actors. Mel Blanc was Bugs Bunny (as Brünnhilde) and  Elmer Fudd (yelling “SMOG”) which is no surprise, but the surprise for me that that Mel Blanc wasn’t Elmer Fudd being Siegfried but rather it was Arthur Q. Bryan who went uncredited in the cartoon.

The short marks the final appearance of Elmer Fudd in a Chuck Jones cartoon.

It has been voted in numerous polls and picked by quite a few critics, a hard to please group indeed, as the best Warner Bros. cartoon ever. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) FOUND IN THE WILD. Sharon Lee took a photo of a surprising signboard she spotted in her town.

(10) YOUR VERDICT IS? For their American Indian Law class this spring, Crystal Huff wrote a parody episode of NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” show. I actually got the first question right — one more than I expected to.

Spring of 2025, Professor Jon Witten (Tufts University) encouraged us to be creative with our final projects, and do something that demonstrated our learning from the semester. This is what I came up with: A parody script of NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” show (approximately), with questions based on the cases we focused on in class. My friends and classmates agreed to help record it over Zoom so that it might be helpful and informative for future use. All errors are presumably my own.

(11) SOMETIMES IT’S NOT GOOD TO BE GREEN. [Item by Steven French.]  “Tool to identify poisonous books developed by University of St Andrews” reports the Guardian.

A new tool to quickly identify books that are poisonous to humans has been developed by the University of St Andrews.

Historically, publishers used arsenic mixed with copper to achieve a vivid emerald green colour for book covers. While the risk to the public is “low”, handling arsenic-containing books regularly can lead to health issues including irritation of the eyes, nose and throat along with more serious side-effects. The toxic pigment in the book bindings can flake off, meaning small pieces can easily be inhaled…

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

Pixel Scroll 6/1/25 Time Flies Like An Arrow, Pixel Flies Like A Scroll

Posted on by
25

(1) STRAIGHT TALK. C.J. Cherryh delivered a “Straight Talk on the Craft” on Facebook yesterday. It begins —

I’ve occasionally encountered people with the notion that editors are so eager for submissions that they will fix any grammatical shortcomings.

Fact: they will fix an outirght mistype, or one of those situations so rare it has professional English instructors arguing pro and con in the bar.

Anything short of that will not get editorial rescue—in the ‘life’s too short’ category.

If you are preparing for life as a professional writer, it’s YOUR business to become versed in your language of choice, its rules and its punctuation, its capitalizations. You will be expected to turn in a manuscript without any extraordinary need for help with the language. It should ALREADY read like a professionally written book. The editor has a thousand other jobs to do. Rewriting your work is not one of them….

(2) A CULTURAL ICON. A few weeks ago we linked to NBC News’ profile “Meet the 1940s secretary who used office time to produce the first lesbian magazine” about Edyth Eyde aka Lisa Ben aka Tigrina. As Tigrina she served as secretary of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society in the mid-Forties. Fanac.org recently posted some examples of her work – “Menace of the LASFS Retroactive Series 1945-11” – which Bruce Pelz mimeoed in the early Sixties. She made the minutes very amusing.

…Treasurer Ackerman announced in reverent tones that the cash on hand amounted to $52.13. I could not vouch for the intensity of the resultant gasp of delighted amazement as this startling news penetrated our brains, but I heard the next day that residents of Pomona complained of a violent windstorm……. Director Laney asked for this report to be repeated, for it was such beautiful music to our ears. Treasurer Ackerman graciously complied, Director Laney thereafter requesting thirty seconds of respectful silence. This in itself is unusual among fen, but then so is $52.13….

The “Menace” of the November 29, 1945 meeting are more serious in tone because they include a proposal for a convention responding to the atomic bombing of Japan just three months earlier.

…Art Joquel proposed an “Atomicon,” a non-technical conference on the subject of the Atomic Bomb and the sociological implications of the Atomic Age. The idea met with general approval, and it was decided that such a project would afford good publicity if interesting speakers could be obtained and the meeting be opened to all who might be interested. Director Laney suggested a public conference, but Art Joquel advised a conference on a smaller scale first, to determine whether it would be successful enough to warrant a conference open to the public. It was suggested that Mr. Van Vogt, or some other science fiction author, or perhaps someone from one of the universities, well acquainted with the subject of the coming Atomic Age, be prevailed upon to give a lecture, preferably non-technical, with emphasis on the sociological aspects of the Atom Bomb menace. It was further suggested that perhaps notes could be taken and printed in Shangri-L’Affaires. Various times and locations were discussed for the Atomiconvention, but nothing was decided upon definitely, since the date of the conference would largely depend upon the speakers. Director Laney delegated to Art Joquel the responsibility of the project, Fran himself to contact Mr. Van Vogt concerning his speaking at the conference….

(3) STRANGER THINGS DIVIDES TO CONQUER. ‘Stranger Things 5’ splits into 3-part release, premiering November” reports Entertainment Weekly.

Netflix isn’t just handing over all episodes of Stranger Things 5. That’d be too easy. The streamer is following their season 4 strategy by splitting the final season of their mega hit show into multiple parts….

…Stranger Things 5 will be split into three premieres. Volume 1 will arrive on Nov. 26, Volume 2 on Christmas, and the finale on New Year’s Eve….

The fifth and final season’s premiere episode is titled “The Crawl” and will pick up in the fall of 1987, which is more than a year after the events of season 4….

(4) PANNED. Entertainment Weekly is not a fan: “’Fountain of Youth’ review: John Krasinski and Natalie Portman fail to find treasure”. The opening paragraph says —

Pee-wee Herman brought us to the basement of the Alamo; Guy Ritchie’s new globe-trotting quest brings us to the basement of the Great Pyramids. And I think after watching both movies, most people will agree to stick with Pee-wee….

(5) THE DOCTOR WON’T MAKE THIS HOUSE CALL. “The ‘War Between Land and the Sea’ Trailer Gives Earth a Battle the Doctor Can’t Stop” – Gizmodo introduces the clip.

To mark the climax of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season, today the BBC revealed the first footage from War Between Land and Sea, which will see UNIT as the front line of defense when the Sea Devils—a race of aquatic reptilians who have existed on Earth since the dawn of time, hiding their advance civilization in hibernation alongside their other distantly affiliated ancient Earth dwellers, the Silurians, for millions of years—emerge from hiding and make themselves known to the Human race.

How do things go? Well, you could tell by the title of the miniseries alone that the answer to that is seemingly “not well”—and without the Doctor to fall back on like they’ve been able to the last couple of times the Sea Devils and Silurians alike tried to emerge, it’s up to humanity to find away to counter the threat of Earth’s ancient reclaimers… and if not co-exist with them, survive their wrath….

(6) BARRY B. LONGYEAR (1942-2025). Prolific sf author Barry B. Longyear died May 6 at the age of 82.

It was love at first sight when fans encountered the science fiction of Barry B. Longyear. After his first story appeared in Asimov’s in 1978, a spate of short fiction followed in 1979 — filling his first collection, Manifest Destiny. They included “Enemy Mine”, which achieved science fiction’s Triple Crown by winning a Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award. And fans sealed their approval of his amazing output by voting Barry the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer in 1980 (now the Astounding Award).

Barry B. Longyear

(He was not a fan of the 1985 film adaptation and was prone to identify himself as “the author of ‘Enemy Mine’ – which there was an attempt to make into a movie.”)

His other award-winning work was the novel The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook which received the Prometheus Award in 2021.

And he wrote three books in the popular Circus World series.

When Barry made his never-to-be-forgotten 1989 appearance as Windycon guest of honor he advanced a simple plan for achieving greatness in the sf field. He had noticed that all successful science fiction writers have a middle initial — Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell — and to help him achieve equal success he insisted publishers and fans be sure to call him “Barry B. Longyear.”

Having enjoyed less than full success with this scheme in the past, he came prepared to drive home his point with memorable visual aids. Barry B. Longyear dramatically unrolled the hem of his sweatshirt — striped with alternating yellow-and-black bands down to his knees. He reached into the paper sack behind the lectern and removed headgear with two bobbling, fuzzy yellow balls on steel-spring antennae. Once completely costumed he rehearsed the audience in his full name, “Barry B. Longyear!” His wife, Jean, emerged from the audience costumed as a sunflower with a halo of yellow petals and green-leaf gloves. In the audience, George Alec Effinger said admiringly, “Nobody I’ve ever been married to would do that for me!”

The family obituary recalls Longyear’s many accomplishments in addition to his writing:

…Barry and Regina married and were together for 58 years. They shared love, understanding, ideals, and values – a real partnership in joy and sorrow. They made their home in Maine and found many close friends in their community. Barry’s immense talents provided enjoyment for his friends and countless fans: writing, painting, acting, carpentry, wood carving, and stonework. He was known for his intelligence, kindness, and sense of humor which could verge on the sardonic but was always witty. He was the author of Enemy Mine, a novella that won all three major science fiction awards in the year it was published. It was made into a film some years ago. Recently Disney purchased the film rights for the next three books. Barry’s Turning the Grain was released recently.

In 1981 he entered St. Mary’s in Minneapolis where he began his recovery from substance use disorder. He remained clean and sober until his death. He founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in Maine, the Dragon Slayers in Farmington, Maine, in 1982. His passion was for the newcomer. When a new person arrived, his whole heart and soul embraced them and hoped for them. If they did not come back, he was deeply grieved, thinking, “That person is going back to the nightmare.” For other recovering addicts, he was always ready with a hug, encouragement, a gold nugget from his treasure house of ever-accumulating wisdom. He would do anything for a friend, as many can attest to….

Barry B. Longyear in 1997. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 79.

Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was the first female Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley. 

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. I find it interesting that none of the original Bond films are streaming. 

She’ll have an even minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin which will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. Possibly even other titles that I’ve not found.  I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad.

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers. 

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. It seemed that Macnee was more engaged here in that role than he was previously. 

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been! 

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor. As I said above she was the first female Doctor. So given we have in the form of Billie Piper our newest female Doctor, our image is of Lumley in that role. 

Joanna Lumley as Doctor Who

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro discovers some brand names have been around for a long time.  
  • Brewster Rockit knows the workaround. 
  • Eek! tells what happened after Luke was introduced to his father. 
  • Speed Bump has a dark fun side. 
  • Robbiegeez: alien comic involves someone who obviously flunked alien infiltration 101.
  • Tom Gauld threw a doubleheader this week.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T09:28:31.164Z

‘Combined Classics’ – my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T16:38:00.347Z

(9) MANDALORIAN PROGNOSTICATION. “Disney+ Calls It Quits With Its First-Ever Star Wars Show (Report)” – The Direct explains what’s next for it.

The first live-action Star Wars show to ever be released reportedly came to an end and won’t continue on Disney+. Since its launch in 2019, Disney+ has been the home of multiple live-action Star Wars series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka. Some shows have received multiple seasons; others were created as limited series. 

After years of its status being uncertain, The Mandalorian, which premiered in November 2019 as Disney+’s first Star Wars series on the day that the streamer launched, will reportedly end with Season 3, meaning that Season 4 will not be developed at Disney+.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian‘s future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu….

(10) BACK TO WAKANDA. Entertainment Weekly includes art from the animated series in “’Eyes of Wakanda’ first look: Creator sets up ‘spy-espionage story’”.

… EW’s exclusive first look at the series reveals some of the warriors we’ll meet. [Showrunner Todd] Harris sets expectations of how much he’s able to reveal: “We try to mirror the actual spirit of the nation of Wakanda by keeping as many secrets as possible.” However, we do know the story involves the Hatut Zaraze, which translates as “Dogs of War” in the Wakandan language. These CIA-esque defense divisions attempt to recover Vibranium artifacts from Wakanda’s enemies.

“When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they’ve got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don’t turn into a bigger problem,” Harris says. “We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world.”…

…Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as “anthology adjacent.” It’s a collection of short stories set at different time periods that all tell one continuous narrative. It’s the equivalent, Harris says, of visiting the British Isles during the time of King Arthur and then returning during the Industrial. “Same country, two different worlds,” he explains. “As we make our touchstones through time, we get to see that kind of evolution.”

The show will be less about the great-great-great ancestor of some Wakandan character (though there is some of that) and more about principles. “We have characters that are very important in the show, but it also examines what kind of person Wakanda makes,” Harris says. “A 10,000-year-old society. What kind of fortitude, what kind of lack of temptation to over expand? All these different things to keep things from imploding, all these different things that have been the detriment to a lot of history…how did they avoid that and what kind of person does that make? What kind of rock-solid principles keeps them on the straight and narrow that balance that’s so hard for everyone alive?”…

(11) GALACTIC BEAUTY. [Item by Steven French.] Some gorgeous shots here including one of a rare ‘double arch’: “Milky Way photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures” in the Guardian.

This year’s collection of images from Capture the Atlas features an extraordinary milestone: a historic photograph of our galaxy taken from the International Space Station by Nasa astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from his latest mission onboard the ISS.

(12) ON BEING REPLACED BY AI. [Item by Steven French.] People from around the world talk about their experiences of being replaced by AI (but it does end on something of a positive note): “’One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI” in the Guardian.

As a kid I was always arty – sketching, making Play-Doh sculptures. I studied game design and art at college, and went down an Adobe Photoshop rabbit hole. It was fun and I was good at it, so I decided to turn it into a career, starting at the company when I was 21. They sell a platform that creates landing pages and email layouts. I’d design the templates and do bespoke work for clients.

When generative AI came along, the company was very vocal about using it as a tool to help clients get creative. As a company that sells digital automation, developments in AI fit them well. I knew they were introducing it to do things like writing emails and generating images, but I never anticipated they’d get rid of me: I’d been there six years and was their only graphic designer. My redundancy came totally out of the blue. One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI.

I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I’m not the only victim – it’s happening globally, and it takes a huge mental toll. I went to college, I studied, I did six years of work. Was it all for nothing?

After I was let go, I spent months looking for a job. I didn’t find work in graphic design, but did get a job as a content creator at a PC manufacturer. I make videos of the production line, interview staff members and do some social media. I’m not worried here: my employers don’t agree with replacing human roles with AI. I may use it to edit pictures but only to enhance something a human created – say, to remove cables in the back of a product image. We would never post an image entirely generated by AI, which is what my old company is doing. My advice to every graphic designer is to learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared.

(13) TRAILER PARK. Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

(14) TRAILER PARK ANNEX. Netflix also has released the first six minutes of Wednesday: Season 2. Part 1 is coming on August 6. Part 2 is coming on September 3.

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

Pixel Scroll 5/31/25 Scroll Tuesday Night

Posted on by
31

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there are probably more fundraising efforts to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 31, 1990 — Total Recall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(11) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My space-dog has no nose!”

“How does he smell?”

“Like a poisonous marzipan cloud!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #99, A Column of Unsolicited Opinions

Posted on by
12
Chris Barkley Photo (circa 1975) by Diana Duncan Holmes; Chris Barkley Photo (May 2025) by Juli Marr

A Long Time Ago, At A Convention Far, Far Away…STAR WARS!

By Chris M. Barkley: If you are a hardcore cinephile like myself, I have no doubt that you remember when a film burned itself into your memory bank so hard that you vividly remember exactly when and where you were when that magical moment happened.

For instance, I saw It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in the early 1970’s in a now extinct theater that nowadays is a popular skating rink.

I had the privilege of seeing 2001; A Space Odyssey during a seven-day limited run in August 1974 at the now defunct Carousel Theater in all of its 70mm glory.

I first viewed Casablanca during exam week at the University of Cincinnati in 1975 in the Tangeman Student Center auditorium.  

I saw Citizen Kane for the first time in a very small viewing room of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Main Library one winter morning during the same period.

I somehow missed the first run of The Matrix in the spring of 1999 but by the time August rolled around it was in a second-run, two dollar movie house in Norwood, Ohio near the hotel Midwestcon was held for many years. I was so dazzled by the story, characters, music and visual effects I went back and saw it two more times before it left town for good. 

But there was one particular, unforgettable film that I remember above all others.

Forty-eight years ago, on the evening of May 27th – 28th 1977, I first encountered George Lucas’ monumental and epic movie, Star Wars (as it was simply called until 1981, when it was permanently dubbed “A New Hope”.

And while my first viewing of Star Wars during the spring of 1977 was inevitable, I can say in hindsight that my initial time was not only incredibly fortuitous but historic as well.  

In May of that year, I was eleven months into my journey in sf fandom, which, in itself was also highly coincidental; I and my best friend Michaele had the good luck to stumble upon a legendary science fiction convention called Midwestcon (the 27th gathering that year) hosted by the Cincinnati Fantasy Group, who had hosted the 7th World Science Fiction Convention, Cinvention, in 1949.

In those ancient days before the internet, any word of a noteworthy sf fan activity, books, art or films was generally spread by word of mouth, magazines, radio, print newspapers or, on rare occasions, television.

As far as I was concerned, anything about Star Wars was well off my radar. If I had attended the 34th Worldcon in Kansas City in 1976 (which I could ill afford to go to at the time) I would have seen a spectacular exhibit sponsored by Lucasfilm Limited, laden with costumes, models, props teasing what the film was all about. Also present was a then little known actor named Mark Hamill, who reportedly lamented the fact that he had starred in this fantastic movie that no one had heard of or will see until next year.

Of course, Hamill, his castmates, the production crew and George Lucas himself had no idea of what they were about to unleash upon the world.

Lucas, who had some first-hand knowledge of sf fandom himself, knew instinctively that if other fans got behind this effort and spread a viral word of mouth campaign, there was a chance this might be a successful film.

This is not to say I was totally unaware of the movie; over the winter Del Rey/Ballantine Books had issued the novelization of Star Wars, which I saw and for the most part ignored because I had no idea what it was all about and looked like dozens of other space opera novels of that period.

(It should be duly noted that those first edition paperbacks, published in December of 1976 with a cover illustrated by Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie and ghost written by Alan Dean Foster, go for A LOT of pretty pennies nowadays.)

That spring, I heard  from other members of the CFG of another well known science fiction convention in Washington D.C. called Disclave, which was that area’s premiere fan events. Several people from the Cincinnati group attended on a regular basis and I decided to go as well.

I was twenty years old at the time and I wanted, for the first time in my life, to plan my own trip and travel alone. I booked a train ticket through the national rail system, AMTRAK and a hotel room at the sprawling Sheraton Park Hotel on Connecticut Avenue.

After a splendid overnight trip, I arrived at the hotel on a beautiful Friday afternoon and the first thing I heard about from friends and fans alike was about the film playing up the street at the Uptown Theater, Star Wars. I also heard that showings were sold out that day so I was not inclined to go see it initially.

Little did I know at the time that the Uptown was one of ONLY thirty-two theaters in America that had premiered Star Wars two days earlier on May 25th. Before the end of that weekend the number would grow to forty-four.

Original Star Wars Poster: 20th Century Fox

By Saturday morning, I had heard enough so I decided to find out what all of the hullabaloo was all about myself. Setting out early that afternoon, I started walking up Connecticut Avenue. 

The Uptown Theater was approximately 3/4 miles away from the hotel. As I got closer, I began to see that there were a great number of people gathered in the distance. When I reached the site I was astonished to see that the line of people stretched from the box office ticket window, south down the sidewalk and up Newark Street N.W., and astoundingly, past the urban neighborhood houses. 

I have never seen a longer line for a film since then.

Grandparents Seeing Star Wars Meme: Unknown

There were a great deal of people milling about the theater. As I surveyed this swirl of humanity a miracle occurred; as I was standing there a man and a woman were profusely apologizing to another man, who was holding two red tickets. 

As the couple left, he turned, saw me and held up the two tickets. “They couldn’t make the midnight show. Would YOU like to buy them?”

Well, of course I said, “SURE!” 

He explained that he was one of the Uptown managers and was outside basically for customer service and to handle the crowd. 

“How much?” I asked eagerly.

“Three dollars each.”

And with that I handed over a five and a single dollar bill to witness history.

I walked back to the hotel somewhat surprised at my luck. I gave away one ticket upon my return but for the life of me I cannot remember who the lucky recipient was.

The rest of the day went by in a blur; I can’t remember a single thing I did between then and attending the film.

I returned to the theater by 11:30 p.m. to ensure I got a good seat. There were only a few dozen people ahead of me. Since the Uptown seated 850 people per showing, I was wise to turn up early.

The Uptown Theater: Washington City Paper
Uptown Theater Interior: Washington City Paper

When the doors opened, I hustled and quickly snagged a seat right towards the middle of the fifth or sixth row from the back of the theater.

When midnight came, the lights went down and there were no preview trailers. The audience spoke in low murmurs. I had no idea of what I was about to see.

I sat back as Alfred Newman’s familiar 20th Century Fox theme tolled. And after this evening, I would forever associate it with this particular film.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…the Star Wars logo burst into existence for the very first time! 

With an incredible clash of instruments, composer John Williams, doing the opposite of what he did two summers ago with his masterful and epic score for Jaws, had a stranglehold on my imagination immediately.

Next came the serial-like expositional screen crawl followed by the camera panning down to the planet of Tatooine and came the first of many splendors; Princess Leia’s cruiser under fire from Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer, which thundered over our heads with astounding effect.  With the four-track Dolby sound system, it seemingly put everyone there seemingly in the middle of the space battle!

And then, a cacophony of thrills; the deserts of Tatooine, the Jawas and their transport, the captive robots, the twin suns, the lightsaber, Mos Eisley spaceport, the Millenium Falcon going into hyperspace, the dreaded Death Star utterly obliterating Alderaan, the rebel’s escape and the climactic battle…

And two hours and one minute later it was all over.

The crowd rose in unison to applaud and scream their approval. A majority of them stayed for the credits as they rolled, something else I had NEVER seen before! For the record, I had no intention of leaving either. There was a very enthusiastic cheer for the Dolby sound system credit as well.

And so, with the last note of Williams magnificent score ringing in our ears, we exited the hall. I stood outside on the sidewalk, still quite stunned at what I just witnessed. The crowd was abuzz with many animated conversations and wildly exaggerated  hand gestures. 

And then I turned and saw one of my new fannish friends, a Baltimore area fan named Michael Walsh (who went on to become the Chair of ConStellation, the 41st Worldcon in 1983), in a similar state of mind. 

We locked eyes, spontaneously joined our hands together and began to dance like two madmen. 

(I also have the satisfaction of personally conveyed that scene to C3PO actor Anthony Daniels as he signed my copy of his book I Am C3PO, during his 2019 book tour. He gave me a generous, wide eyed smile in return.)

Star Wars newspaper review: The Washington Post

 And the rest, as they say frequently, is history. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed many of the series’ spin offs and sequels (with the possible exception of the Ewoks) and especially after the now concluded prequel series Andor, which I rank among the best of all of the iterations.

As far movie going experiences go, there are very few fantastic or transforming experiences as seeing Star Wars for the very first time on a 70mm screen in a full house of unsuspecting moviegoers.    

I haven’t forgotten that evening and I’m willing to bet that very few of those who were there haven’t either.

Reference Links:

Pixel Scroll 5/26/25 Oh, I’ve Got A Brand New Pair Of Pixel Scrolls, You’ve Got To Godstalk Me

Posted on by
40

(1) GERMAN TOWN’S STEAMPUNK CELEBRATION. Cora Buhlert lets us ride along in “Hanseatic Steampunk: Cora’s Adventures at the 2025 Aethercircus Festival in Buxtehude”. Lots of photos of what she saw at the con, her food, and everything along the way. A fascinating read.

… Of course, there were also plenty of Steampunks about, ranging from cosplayers in full Steampunk gear via historical costumers and goths (I spotted a Wednesday Addams) to people who borrowed grandpa’s old suit and regular folks who accessorised their outfits with a few Steampunk piece such as an elderly lady in regular street clothes with a Steampunk necklace. Naturally, the Aethercircus attracted cosplayers who wanted to show off their costumes, but it was also heartening to see how many regular non-fannish folks made an effort to fit in. So enjoy these photos of great costumes…

(2) MURDERBOT SOUNDTRACK. Amanda Jones’ musical compositions for the first season of Murderbot are available at many platforms, including Bandcamp: “Murderbot: Season 1 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack)”. Several of the tracks are free to sample, including the “Sanctuary Moon Main Title Theme”. How can you resist?

(3) LUCAS MUSEUM ISSUES. “As George Lucas’s ‘Starship’ Museum Nears Landing, He Takes the Controls” reports the New York Times. (Article is behind a paywall.)

…Even now — 15 years since Lucas first proposed a museum, and eight years after ground was broken in Los Angeles — many questions remain about an ambitious but somewhat amorphous project that is now slated to be completed next year.

There has also been turbulence as the museum nears its final approach. In recent weeks the museum has parted ways with its director and chief executive of the past five years and eliminated 15 full-time positions and seven part-time employees, including much of the education department. Lucas is now back in the director’s chair, installing himself as the head of “content direction” and naming Jim Gianopulos, a former movie studio executive and Lucas Museum trustee, as interim chief executive….

… The museum recently said it could not give figures for the size of its staff or its projected operating budget. “As the museum is now in the process of moving from completion of construction to implementation of exhibitions and opening to visitors,” the museum spokeswoman said in an email, “both the staffing and operating budget are currently in transition and can better be addressed as we conclude our pending budgeting process.”…

…What has not changed is the fact that the core of the institution’s collection would be items amassed by Lucas over the years. Beyond Hollywood memorabilia from his films and digital animation, his collection includes book and magazine illustrations assembled over 50 years, including those by R. Crumb and N.C. Wyeth; comic books; and Norman Rockwell’s paintings — such as the artist’s 1950 cover for the Saturday Evening Post, “Shuffleton’s Barbershop,” purchased from the Berkshire Museum in 2018….

… Some of those involved in the institution’s development say they believed that Jackson-Dumont came up against Lucas’ role as the ultimate decision maker with a long history of creative control as well as his bottom-line, where-the-buck-stops primacy as founder and underwriter of the 300,000-square-foot museum. The filmmaker has had a hand in every detail of the museum’s development, former staffers say, from architectural details to exhibition layout to wall text.

Robert Storr, an art historian, critic and former dean at the Yale School of Art, said it is important for major collectors to understand the need for curatorial expertise and experience to shape exhibitions and give them scholarly context.

“If he thinks he’s the single arbiter, then he’s just like all these megalomaniacal patrons who think they know more than anyone they can hire,” Storr said. “They don’t have any methodology for how they talk about the evolution or digestion of ideas. It’s a serious intellectual problem that’s at the heart of all this.”

Conscious of his age (he turned 81 on May 14) — and the escalating construction bill — Lucas is eager to get the museum finished and open, those interviewed said, seeing it as his legacy and a long-awaited chance to share his collection with the public….

(4) NOT A POTTER NOVEL. Camestros Felapton has favorable things to say about this finalist: “Hugo 2025 Novel: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky”.

…Tchaikovsky writes a lot of books and I’ve enjoyed each one I’ve read but this is one of the strongest of his, although structurally one of the simplest. It has a relatively small cast of characters and it mainly (aside from one part) proceeds as a first person linear account by Arton Daghdev of his experiences as a prisoner on Kiln. I suspect, part of Tchaikovsky’s secret to his prolificness actually is mirrored by how life on Kiln works. Tchaikovsky’s books rework and remix a variety of recurring ideas in new settings and new combinations….

(5) COVERT FANAC. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “The CIA Secretly Ran a Star Wars Fan Site” says 404 Media (article is behind a paywall). A screenshot of the site can be seen at the link. The headlined Star Wars fan page was only one of many such CIA communication sites.

“Like these games you will,” the quote next to a cartoon image of Yoda says on the website starwarsweb.net. Those games include Star Wars Battlefront 2 for Xbox; Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II for Xbox 360, and Star Wars the Clone Wars: Republic Heroes for Nintendo Wii. Next to that, are links to a Star Wars online store with the tagline “So you Wanna be a Jedi?” and an advert for a Lego Star Wars set.

The site looks like an ordinary Star Wars fan website from around 2010. But starwarsweb.net was actually a tool built by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to covertly communicate with its informants in other countries, according to an amateur security researcher. The site was part of a network of CIA sites that were first discovered by Iranian authorities more than ten years ago before leading to a wave of deaths of CIA sources in China in the early 2010s….

(6) DI FILIPPO CELEBRATES NEW COLLECTION. “Sci-Fi Writer Paul Di Filippo Talks Hiveheads & Nine Hundred Grandmothers!” with Mark Barsotti.

An entertaining chinwag with a first-rate writer of the fantastic (and other genres), Paul Di Filippo. We discuss Paul’s latest short story collection, THE VISIONARY PAGEANT AND OTHER STORIES. He also reveals he’ll be doing a novel set in a John Vance universe! Recorded May 6, 2025.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 26, 1995 — Johnny Mnemonic

Ok, I’m assuming that most of you have read the Nebula-nominated story that the film Johnny Mnemonic was based off of? It was originally published in the May 1981 issue of Omni magazine but it has been reprinted quite a few times in the forty years since then. I could’ve sworn it got nominated for a Hugo but the Hugo Awards site tells me it wasn’t. 

Well the film had its premiere thirty years ago on this date. I for one did not see in theatre, indeed did not know it existed until maybe a decade later. My opinion of it will be noted below.

The screenplay was supposedly by William Gibson as it says as IMDb so we can’t fault the script here being crafted by others, can one? Well it was as you’ll see below. 

Was it at all good? Well, the critics were divided on that. Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun-Times review said “Johnny Mnemonic is one of the great goofy gestures of recent cinema, a movie that doesn’t deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis but has a kind of idiotic grandeur that makes you almost forgive it.” 

Caryn James of the New York Times has the last word: “Though the film was written by the cyberpunk master William Gibson from his own story and was directed by the artist Robert Longo, ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ looks and feels like a shabby imitation of ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Total Recall.’ It is a disaster in every way. There is little tension in the story despite the ever-present threat of an exploding brain. The special effects that take us on a tour of the information superhighway — traveling inside the circuits of Johnny’s brain, or viewing his search for information while wearing virtual reality headgear — look no better than a CD-ROM. Visually, the rest of the film looks murky, as if the future were one big brown-toned mud puddle.”

Now let’s talk about numbers. It’s generally accepted that a film needs to make at least three times what it cost to produce to just break even in the Hollyworld accounting system. Johnny Mnemonic didn’t even come close to that. It cost at least thirty million to produce (the numbers are still are in dispute even to this day as the Studio stored them in a file cabinet in a basement guarded by very hungry accountants) and made just double that and that’s not even taking into account that the Studio got at best fifty percent of the ticket price. 

There were two versions of this film. The film had actually premiered in Japan earlier on April 15th, in a longer version, well six minutes longer, that was closer to the director’s cut that came out later (yes there was a director’s cut — there’s always a director’s cut, isn’t there?), featuring a score by Mychael Danna and different editing. I doubt any version makes it a better film.

I haven’t discussed the film or the cast, so NO SPOILERS here. It’s possible, just possible, that someone here hasn’t seen it yet. 

I have. Shudder. Just shudder. Bad acting, worse story and that SFX? The lead actor who I shall not name here was so wrong as being cast that role as to defy comprehension as to why he got cast for it.  Well this unfortunately was due to a common occurrence in Hollywood that the studio decided to make the casting calls so the person that I won’t mention was picked up by the studio, so we can blame them for him. Frell. 

Then there were the numerous script rewrites were forced upon them by the studio, so Gibson, the producer  and the writing staff who had a great script, at the beginning according to Longo, ended up with a piece of shit again according to him. Now that piece of shit was one that the studio loved. Idiots. Obviously not science fiction fans there, were they? Turning into what it became proved that.

A black-and-white edition of the film, titled Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White was released three years ago. Robert Longo, the producer, says it is closer to what he and Gibson envisioned. It is available on Blu-Ray. 

Now y’all are free to give away as much as you want for spoilers. That’s on your heads. Or memory chips. 

Someday I’m hope for a better interpretation of a Gibson film.  I’ve hopes for the soon to be Neuromancer series on Amazon. Really I do. I’m even to once again going to break my long standing stance of not seeing anything made off a work I liked a lot. I did with Johnny Mnuemonic and I’m still regretting it. 

I didn’t see The Peripheral series on Sci-Fi as I don’t subscribe to that streaming service. Who watched it? Opinions please. 

It wasn’t at all liked by the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes Neuromancer who gave it a rating of just thirty-one percent when I originally wrote the first version of this but there’s no pages for it there now. Interesting… 

The most excellent Burning Chrome collection which has this story is available in dead tree format from your favorite bookseller but not for purchase on Amazon though it available if you have Kindle Unlimited; iBooks also known as Apple Books has it available but not Kobo.  

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) A SUPER LATE NIGHT. ScreenRant is breathless: “I Can Barely Believe It, But Stephen Colbert Is Now Part of DC’s Official Canon All Because of Superman”.

Yes, it’s true, Stephen Colbert has just been officially canonized in DC Comics lore, thanks to his appearance on an upcoming variant cover, which features Superman sitting at the iconic late night host’s desk for an interview. Notably, Colbert’s introduction into DC lore follows suit with his long-time canon status within the rival Marvel Universe.

Colbert and DC Comics shared a clip from his show on Instagram, in which the host revealed artist Dan Mora’s special variant cover for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #40, written by Mark Waid, with art by Adrián Gutiérrez, which features a broadly smiling Superman holding up a copy of his new self-help book, alongside a beaming Stephen Colbert.

(10) SNAKE! IT HAD TO BE SNAKE! “Review and photos of Snake Plissken sixth scale action figure” by Captain Toy. Lots of photos at the link.

John Carpenter has been responsible for some of the greatest movies of the 70’s/80’s, including Halloween, the Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, They Live, Big Trouble in Little China, and of course – Escape from New York. This sci-fi action flick was a hit for Carpenter, and it made Kurt Russell an action star.

There have been a few attempts at recreating the protagonist Snake Plissken in action figure form, but the success has been questionable. I have the sixth scale version done by Sideshow, and it left a lot to be desired. Now Asmus is releasing a new, very high end version complete with ‘rooted’ hair and moving eyeball, all for the high end price of about $350. This is part of their Crown Collection, their top line series. 

There’s actually more than one version – there’s a version with sculpted hair that will run $280, one with rooted hair that runs around $350 at retailers, and an exclusive version (reviewed here) only available through the Asmus website, that includes a diorama base and costs $375…

This is the figure’s base:

(11) USE THE MEDICAL INSURANCE, LUKE. “This working Star Wars speeder bike seems too good to be true” says T3. 

Polish company Volonaut claims have to invented an “Airbike flying motorbike” that hovers and can fly at speeds up to 200kph. The compact flying machine takes us a step closer to the world imagined by Star Wars, where everyone seems to have some type of personal hovering transport.

While hover bikes are common across the Star Wars universe, the best known is the Aratech 74-Z, the speeder bikes used by the Empire’s scout troopers on the Endor during Return of the Jedi.

The person who sent File 770 the link is certainly skeptical: “First, 200 KPH on that thing? You’ve got to be kidding, right? There’s not even a windscreen. Second, there are no wheels on this sucker. Which might seem OK and I can see why they absolutely need to avoid the mostly parasitic weight and drag of those. But if you come in for a landing with a significant forward speed left and those skids catch on something, you’re gonna be eating a lot of dirt. Not from the dust being kicked up, but from your face slamming into the ground as you flip over the front of the bike. Third, there’s a long tube sticking out in front. This does sort of enhance the resemblance to the Star Wars Storm Trooper speeder bike. But I don’t think that’s the point. It looks to me like it could be a pitot tube, which makes it a piece of functioning equipment as it’s the way the bike will sense forward speed. That actually plays together with the previous point in that bending that tube could cause speed to be read incorrectly and a moderate tipping forward on landing could make the tube contact the ground or other obstacle. Depending on the overall flight control system, I’m not sure how much of a serious effect that would have. But, I could see trust vectoring having an issue balancing hover and propulsion if it got an incorrect speed reading. I’ve never been a motorcycle rider (heck, I don’t even ride bicycles) but I think even very experienced recreational motorcyclists might want to let somebody else try this out for a while first.” 

(12) YOU HAVE TO GO BACK. Saturday Night Live 50th season-ending episode includes this parody of a teen time travel adventure: “Will and Todd’s Radical Experience”. (And their phone both is not bigger on the inside.)

Two time-traveling students (Andrew Dismukes, Marcello Hernández) try to return historical figures (Quinta Brunson, Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Emil Wakim) back to their own timeline.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George thinks we ought to hear what it would be like “If Red Carpet Interviews Were Honest”. What did we ever do to him?

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 5/22/25 The Pixel Of Doctor Islandia And Other Scrolls, And Other Scrolls

Posted on by
34

(1) WRITE ON DEMAND PUBLISHING. Chuck Tingle wasted no time capitalizing on the Chicago Sun-Times’ gaffe of including numerous AI-hallucinated titles on its summer recommended reading list. He has slightly adjusted the author’s name from Andy Weir to Andy Mirror, which will probably help keep his lawyer happy.

(2) THE ANARCHY AND THE ECSTASY. Molly Templeton argues “Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense” at Reactor.

For reasons I’m not sure I will ever fully understand, the topic of magic and rules comes up with slightly alarming frequency in SFF circles. So much so, in fact, that it is very tempting to use ominous capital letters when referring to the two bits of said topic: Magic and Rules. Does magic have to have rules? Would everyone just run about drunk with power if the rules did not constrain their magics in some way? What are rules, and what are parameters? If limits are not imposed upon wizards, will they ever impose them upon themselves? When does magic become science, and how much of this entire topic can I throw at the feet of Clarke’s third law?

That law, for those in need of a refresher, states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Fair enough. But must we try to reverse-engineer this?…

… I am here instead to sing the praises of rebellious, lawless, delightfully un-rulebound magic—not just the kind people do, but also the kind that simply is. I tried to find an example from Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland books and was overwhelmed with them: the wyverary (half wyvern, half library); Gleam the lamp; the smartly dressed Green Wind; the whole thing with the moon in the third book: Valente writes like she’s never heard of “rules,” and I have never wanted anything in one of her novels explained to me any further than she explains it. Strange, arguably magical things happen in Helen Oyeyemi books, and whenever they—or she—run up against a rule, whether of science or nature or anything else, it goes ignored. A lot of my favorite books, I can’t remember how the magic works. And I mean that as a compliment. In The Incandescent, magic exists, and some people are just better at various kinds of it than others. (Some of it involves invoking demons, and if you mess up that kind, well, magic definitely has a price.) Magic in The Magicians comes from pain. That’s fine. That’s a source, not a rule (one does have to learn fancy hand motions in order to do magic, but that’s a process). It also always kind of feels like a wry punchline to me. Every life has some pain. Therefore we’ve all got some magic….

(3) WRITER BRIEFINGS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 (formerly known as the Home Service) has just broadcast two programmes of interest to writers and, I guess, avid readers too.

The first is on the history of copyright through to today.  As Filers will know, there has been great author and fan concern over the use of using copyright material to train AI.  This is of relevance to the history of copyright which came about due to advances in reproduction technology, from monks’ highly illustrated ad coloured manuscripts to the printing press and digital material. Listen here: BBC Radio 4: In Our Time, “Copyright”.

Copyright protects and regulates a piece of work – whether that’s a book, a painting, a piece of music or a software programme. It emerged as a way of balancing the interests of authors, artists, publishers, and the public in the context of evolving technologies and the rise of mechanical reproduction.

Writers and artists such as Alexander Pope, William Hogarth and Charles Dickens became involved in heated debates about ownership and originality that continue to this day – especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Melvyn Bragg moderates.

The second is on the way we (society) are (is) changing the use of punctuation. The question mark and exclamation mark is holding its own, but the comma, colon, and eve the full stop is on the way out! Listen here: BBC Radio 4: Word of Mouth, “The End of the Full Stop?”

The use of punctuation is rapidly changing within the quick-fire back-and-forth of instant messaging. Are these changes causing misunderstandings?

Presenter Michael Rosen and his guest Dr Christian Ilbury discuss. Is the full stop on the way out? What about capital letters? Exclamation marks and question marks seem to be holding their ground, but what about the rest?

(4) RECALLING THE FIRST TIME. [Item by Steven French.] Remember the first time you saw Star Wars in the cinema? Well, the Guardian would like to hear from you: “Tell us your memories of seeing Star Wars in cinemas”.

You can tell us your memories of seeing the original Star Wars using this form.

Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish.

(5) BILL WOULD BLOCK STATES FROM REGULATING AI. “House Republicans want to stop states from regulating AI. More than 100 organizations are pushing back” reports CNN Business.

More than 100 organizations are raising alarms about a provision in the House’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package that would hamstring the regulation of artificial intelligence systems.

Tucked into President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” agenda bill is a rule that, if passed, would prohibit states from enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for 10 years.

With AI rapidly advancing and extending into more areas of life — such as personal communications, health care, hiring and policing — blocking states from enforcing even their own laws related to the technology could harm users and society, the organizations said. They laid out their concerns in a letter sent Monday to members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making or using that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public,” the letter, provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its release, states.

The bill cleared a key hurdle when the House Budget Committee voted to advance it on Sunday night, but it still must undergo a series of votes in the House before it can move to the Senate for consideration.

The 141 signatories on the letter include academic institutions such as the University of Essex and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, and advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Economic Policy Institute. Employee coalitions such as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and the Alphabet Workers Union, the labor group representing workers at Google’s parent company, also signed the letter, underscoring how widely held concerns about the future of AI development are….

(6) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR JOURNEY PLANET AUGUST ISSUE, [Item by Jean Martin.] San Francisco and the Bay Area have inspired cultural and scientific revolutions since the Gold Rush in 1849. Thus, we’re excited to boost the city’s relevance in the science fiction/fantasy genre in the August issue of Journey Planet.

If you have any suggestions for an article, poem, story or art that revolves around San Francisco and science fiction/fantasy, please reach out to us at: journeyplanetsubmissions@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is July 1.

For instance, we’d welcome articles about books or movies/TV shows set in San Francisco and its environs and/or created by residents of the SF Bay Area. We’d especially like to hear from diverse voices, such as myths and folktales from the Ohlone and Hispanic cultures. Looking forward to hearing your creative ideas!

(7) FREE READ. A new story from Grist’s “Imagine 2200” – “The Seed Dropper”.

In this poetic story, by simóne j banks, Louisiana native June returns to his hometown decades after devastation from floods and petrochemical plants chased his family away, with a mission to reseed the land and memories from the past to point the way.

Deeply connected to both the beauty of the Mississippi River and the devastation brought by petrochemical plants to the region known as Cancer Alley, The Seed Dropper dabbles in nostalgia and sadness, but also hope and possibility, as it imagines the world of 2050 and the first steps to restoring what’s been lost.

(8) GUFF PAPERBACK RELEASED. The GUFF trip report anthology announced as an ebook in February is now also available in paperback from Ansible Editions: GUFF: The Incomplete Chronicles edited by David Langford. Here’s the full information about the book.

This volume gathers up the chapters of GUFF reports that were unfinished or too short for standalone publication. Donations to GUFF rather than TAFF are encouraged for those who enjoy this one. Download it here.

This book brings together the known segments of unfinished Get Up-and-Over/Going Under Fan Fund trip reports. The GUFF winners represented are Joseph Nicholas (1981), Justin Ackroyd (1984), Irwin Hirsh (1987), Roman Orszanski (1990), Eva Hauser (1992), Paul Kincaid (1999), Damien Warman and Juliette Woods (jointly, 2005) and Ang Rosin (2007).

From the Introduction by David Langford

As with its ancestor fund TAFF, a long-standing tradition of GUFF is that returned winners administer the fund until replaced by their successor from the same hemisphere and if possible write a substantial trip report, both for sale in aid of the fund and for the entertainment and edification of fandom. This tradition goes back to before TAFF itself began. A special fund was organized to bring Walt Willis from Ireland to the USA and the World SF Convention in 1952 (an initiative which led directly to the founding of TAFF), and his report The Harp Stateside is regarded as a classic of fan writing.

Many GUFF winners since 1979 have likewise published full-length trip reports (click here for available downloads). Some were waylaid by the horrors of real life and failed even to begin a report; some published instalments in fanzines but didn’t finish. Joseph Nicholas drafted a very long report whose MS was lost in a house move. Irwin Hirsh has published ten instalments, enough to be called a completed report, but wants to add more and is represented here by two chapters about the UK Worldcon he attended. Otherwise, this ebook collects what remains of reports that have been abandoned, or are so brief that they couldn’t plausibly be published as a standalone fanzine in the tradition of The Harp Stateside. There’s a lot of fine fan writing here.

This GUFF-centred companion to the TAFF Trip Report Anthology (2017) is published as an Ansible Editions ebook for the TAFF site on 1 March 2025. Cover artwork by Ian Gunn. 73,000 words.

(9) STARTS TOMORROW. Fountain of Youth – Official Trailer. The best secrets are the hardest to find. John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González and Domhnall Gleeson star in Fountain of Youth. Premiering May 23 on Apple TV+

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 22, 1981 — Outland film

Outland premiered forty-four years ago this date in the States in select cities, but everywhere that following weekend. It got a Hugo nomination at Chicon IV, the year that Raiders of the Lost Ark won. 

This original title of the film was Io as it’s set on Jupiter’s moon Io, but audience testing showed that wasn’t understandable at all as the test audiences thought it was the number ten, or, at least to me less puzzlingly, low. So in homage to the Western genre, it became Outland.

Which was appropriate as the writer Peter Hyams wanted to do one: “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, ‘You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western’. I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space.”

So they had a script that they really liked, now they need their actor. They wanted and got Sean Connery to be in their version in High Noon. Connery’s career had been in a nose dive as of late then, so this was a golden chance for him, so he took the role. 

Law enforcement officers are faced with the nature of right and wrong, and duty versus keeping themselves safe, but while Will Kane in High Noon is played as an archetypal hero who discovers the world isn’t black and white as he was led to believe, Will O’Niel already exists firmly in the gray where things are always messy when we meet him. 

Connery was magnificent in this role. In addition to Sean Connery, the movie includes performances by Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, and James Sikking, who all I firmly believe deliver memorable portrayals of complex characters.

So they got the lead and the rest of an excellent core cast, now they had to film a movie. They had a very tight budget, just seventeen million dollars. The quite amazing sets were enhanced by the use of a new filming process called Introvision which allowed the director to mix a combination of sets, mattes and a generous use of miniatures in-camera, avoiding the then-lengthy process of extensive use of green screens.

Critics were mixed on it. Gary Arnold at the Washington Post thought it was “trite and dinky” whereas Desmond Ryan at the Philadelphia Inquirer called it: “a brilliant sci-fi Western.” 

I said it cost seventeen million to make, and it made, errr, just about seventeen million dollars. That means that it lost money for the studio. Lots by the time you figure printing up reels for the theatres, promotional costs and that the studio only gets fifty percent most often of ticket sales. Not that the studio would admit that.

Now I liked the film. I saw it some years after it came out and thought it worked rather well, but then I think it is police drama rather than a SF film.

It is not legally streaming anywhere so you know that linking to it is a bad idea, right? 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) WHAT’S THE BEST WAY FOR A MUSIC FAN TO SUPPORT THEIR FAVORITE ARTISTS? [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] This is an interesting look at how fandom and commerce interact, focusing on music but of interest, I think, to fans more generally. NPR asks “Is there a right way of being a music fan?”

…I offer these two stories to highlight the contrasting conceptions of what constitutes fandom in 2025. In the first case, the fan is a customer looking for the best deal. In the second, she is a patron, supporting a creative favorite not only with money but through sustained attention and care. Both terms stick the artist within a somewhat servile position, delivering goods, but the latter feels more genteel and possibly more sustaining. “Customer” implies a one-way relationship, with the artist cast as a seller; “patron” suggests an ongoing connection through which a fan ardently supports an artist for a time or over a whole career….

… Today, “always on” artists have to be far more responsive to their fans’ desires. This means providing more music, but also many other means of consumption and interaction, from VIP concert experiences to TikTok videos, special merch lines, and, for an increasing number of artists, OnlyFans or Patreon accounts that grant direct access. Much commentary exists on the ever-growing power of the fan, but I’m interested in how fans negotiate this partly real, partly imagined surge in influence, and what it means for artists at a moment when their role in society has never been less clear….

(13) AI CHATBOTS DO NOT HAVE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] So says the judge. “In lawsuit over teen’s death, judge rejects arguments that AI chatbots have free speech rights” – AP News has the story.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.

The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of the attorneys for Garcia, said the judge’s order sends a message that Silicon Valley “needs to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market.”…

(14) ROCKETSHIPS IN QUEENS? Untapped New York tours “Rocket Park, a Space Age Remnant of NYC’s 1964 World’s Fair”.

Peeking over the foliage outside the Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park are two towering metal structures you wouldn’t expect to find in Queens, rocketships. These space-age remnants are relics of the United States Space Park, an attraction created by NASA and the Department of Defense for the 1964 World’s Fair. These vessels aren’t even the first rockets to come to New York City. In 1957, a Redstone rocket was put on display in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal. While the Redstone rocket was only a temporary fixture, you can still see the World’s Fair’s rockets today in Rocket Park, a playground area outside the Hall of Science….

… The fair was buzzing with excitement over the final frontier. Streets in the park’s radial grid pattern had names like Universe Court, Astronaut Court, Avenue of Science, and Avenue of Discovery. Visitors would find the iconic Unisphere in the Fountain of the Planets. The space motif is also exemplified in the Rocket Thrower, a massive bronze statue by Donald DeLue. The Rocket Thrower is posed in motion as he hurtles a rocket towards a constellation of gilded stars….

… The United States Space Park at the World’s Fair gave people a chance to see space travel technology, which they heard so much about on television, up-close in real life….

(15) MINI TRYLON AND PERISPHERE. And here’s a memory from even earlier, New York’s 1939 World’s Fair. “A Trylon and Perisphere Replica Once Stood at the Lincoln Tunnel”.

Searching the World’s Fair archives, Untapped New York’s founder Michelle Young came upon a forgotten gem: a mini Trylon and Perisphere replica that once stood at the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. This information booth structure was meant to be eye-catching and to “induce the out-of-town motorist to stop at the booths before plunging into Manhattan.” The Trylon and Perisphere were the centerpieces of the 1939 World’s Fair and this piece of promotional architecture was one of many replicas that popped up around NYC to promote the fair….

(16) NO WONDER THEY’RE ‘THE LAST’. The Guardian’s episode recap stirs up a panic: “’I didn’t sign up for a musical!’ Are the guitar sing-alongs killing The Last of Us?”

This week’s episode of The Last of Us contained a moment that froze the blood. For a split second, the hearts of the viewing audience rose into their throats in horror. This is a show that has presented us with terror after nightmarish terror but, even by these exceptional standards, this was almost too much to bear. I am talking, of course, about the scene where Ellie started playing a Pearl Jam song on a guitar.’

(17) TRAILER PARK. “Universal Drops ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Final Trailer” – Animation World Network sets the scene.

It’s a survival story, harkening back to the original, iconic Jurassic Park. Universal has just dropped the final trailer for its upcoming badass dino adventure, Jurassic World Rebirth, in theaters July 2.

With lots of big, sharp, pointy teeth!

The huge Jurassic franchise is back with its latest adventure, set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, filled with biting humor and biting creatures… including raptors! And Pterywhatevers! Johansson, Bailey and Mahershala Ali anchor an all-star cast as an extraction team, hunting potentially life-saving DNA at the original Jurassic Park’s research facilities, that happens to be inhabited by the worst of the worst dinosaurs that were left behind. The film also stars Rupert Friend and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Jean Martin, David Langford, John A Arkansawyer, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna) (and not Gene Wolfe, either).]

Pixel Scroll 5/18/25 Pixels Tickle When They Walk Through You

Posted on by
21

(1) ZELAZNY-INSPIRED ART. Michael Whelan discusses the series of covers he created for “The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny” from the NESFA Press.

I rank Roger Zelazny as one of the best F/SF writers of his generation. One of my prime regrets is that I never got to meet him.

I was immediately intrigued when offered the chance to provide covers for a multi-volume collection of his works by NESFA Press, the publishing side of the New England Science Fiction Association.

While pitching the project, the publisher explained that Roger had said in an interview that he always wished to have me do a cover for one of his books; alas that it didn’t come to pass during his lifetime. But I was happy to show my respect for his legacy through my art….

…Upon reflection I settled on a blend of 1) managing elements of RZ stories that applied to tales within a particular volume, and 2) adding things ‘on the fly’ as a part of the process of doing the painting, using connections that popped up while adding details to the composition.

I’m not going to lie…it did occur to me that I could paint anything at random, knowing that a connection could be found between what I chose to depict and some narrative or thematic element in Zelazny’s writing.

That was liberating. I felt free to develop the composition from a “big design” standpoint since there was such a wealth of material to draw on to “populate” the image areas.

The idea of running one image across the spines of the seven books was discussed early on; I believe Alice Lewis, jacket designer on this project, was the one who originally mentioned it. The challenge of making it work seemed exciting, so I was drawn to that approach right away….

(Paul Weimer has reviewed the first five books in the series for File 770: “Paul Weimer Review: Roger Zelazny’s Threshold”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Two: Power & Light”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Three: This Mortal Mountain”; “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny, Volume Four, Last Exit to Babylon”; and “Paul Weimer Review: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume 5: Nine Black Doves”.)

(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 CONSULTATIVE VOTE IS OPEN. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting. Voting runs from May 1 to May 31 and is accessed through the member registration portal in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting. More information is available on the Consultative Vote Webpage.

As previously announced, Seattle Worldcon is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.

The purpose of the consultative vote is to test whether this type of vote is feasible, in case the practice is someday adopted as a formal part of the WSFS decision-making process. These proposals were chosen because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.

(3) ON THE WAY. “Frankenstein in the Age of CRISPR-Cas9” at Nautilus.

…[Mary] Shelley drew on a mythology of technology that goes back to the 6th century B.C. when the figure Prometheus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it to mankind. The “fire bringer,” is often associated with Lucifer, (literally meaning “light bearer”), who pilfered light from the heavens and brought it down to Earth. The “fall of man” implies an age when mortals are illuminated with knowledge. Immanuel Kant was the first to modernize the term, when he nicknamed his pal, Benjamin Franklin, “the Prometheus of modern times” for his nifty work with kites. In the early 19th century, Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus put the concept into terms of controlling biological forces. She not only arguably invented science fiction, but her novel offered a plot device for modern tales, including Flowers for Algernon, The Stand, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Yann Martel’s short story “We Ate the Children Last.” We all understand the illusions. A scientist sets out to create a more perfect entity, only to have it backfire as the thing he creates gets out of control.

…By the early 1980s, Richard Mulligan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isolated genetic code and wrapped it up in a virus, returning it to humankind as a tool. In the same decade, companies such as Biogen and Genentech claimed the patents to control the first applications of genetic engineering. Scientists today are using the gene editing tool CRISPR to do things such as tinker with the color of butterfly wings, genetically alter pigs, and engineer microbes with potentially pathogenic or bioterror purposes. Last year, a group of 150 scientists held a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School to discuss a project to synthesize the code of a human genome from scratch using chemical techniques. As Andrew Pollack wrote in The New York Times, “the prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.” In August, Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland reported using CRISPR to alter a human embryo….

…We are at the very start of the “industrial revolution of the human genome,” just as Shelley was writing at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Her essential insight is that science and technology can progress but will never achieve social control without a willful and ongoing abdication, or repression, of our agency. Shelley wants to tell us that what we seek from technology is based on our existential fear of being in control over our own lives, which have no ultimate solution, and which compels us to so eagerly pursue what psychologists call an external locus of control. But mythology is often first presented as a utopia, only to result in a dystopian reality…

(4) THE SF COLLECTION SOME OF US GREW UP WITH. “A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume One & Two, Anthony Boucher editor, 1959 Doubleday & 1960 SF Book Club” features at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

The Short: I recently reread one of my favorite SF anthologies as a much younger person, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume One and Volume Two, Anthony Boucher editor, 1959 Doubleday/1960 Science Fiction Book Club. It was available for purchase only as a two volume set when new. I am not aware of any other SF anthology that includes two novels and 10 pieces of short fiction, much less one that includes four novels and 20 short fiction works in the set. My favorite novel included is the classic The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, and my favorite short fiction is the classic “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff“, a novella by Theodore Sturgeon. My overall average rating is 3.73/5, or “Very good”. It was great to rediscover how great the John Wyndham novel Re-Birth is…. 

(5) GOING ROGUE IS RECOMMENDED. “Five Takeaways From Rewatching ‘Rogue One’ After ‘Andor’” at The Ringer.

…The makers of Andor have teased how transformative it can be to revisit Rogue One after the prequel-to-a-prequel’s conclusion. As of last week, Andor creator Tony Gilroy hadn’t rewatched Rogue since finishing Andor, but he hyped the practice anyway: “Other people around me have done it. So I’ve been reassured. And I’ve seen bits and pieces of it; it comes on, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, holy crap. Look what that does.’” Diego Luna was even more insistent. “I urge people to see Rogue One right after the end of Season 2,” the actor who plays Cassian said. “They’re going to see a different film.”…

There follow five takeaways which, as you should expect, are full of spoilers.

(6) AS IMAGINED IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. [Item by Andrew Porter.] “When a president goes rogue: In these books, it already happened” at Salon. Discussion of several novels including The Man In The High Castle and Parable of The Sower.

…As the second Trump administration lurches into its third month, moving fast and breaking government, I’ve been studying what American writers have suggested would occur if a demagogue were elected president. A next step, in novels such as Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” involves a direct attack on the Supreme Court if it declines to affirm a president’s agenda. Much the same forces are at work 90 years later. Alternative histories, particularly dystopias, reflect their societies’ radical pessimism, as  Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore suggested in 2017:  

“Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission, the fiction of an untrusting, lonely, and sullen twenty-first century, the fiction of fake news and Infowars, the fiction of helplessness and hopelessness.”…

(7) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER THOUGHTS. [Item by Steven French.] A couple of genre related novels top the Guardian’s list of contenders for the International Booker Prize: “A Danish Groundhog Day or tales of millennial angst… What should win next week’s International Booker?”

What unites the books on the shortlist for this year’s International Booker prize? Brevity, for one thing: five of the six are under 200 pages, and half barely pass 100. They are works of precision and idiosyncrasy that don’t need space to make a big impression. Themes are both timely – AI, the migration crisis – and evergreen: middle-class ennui; the place of women in society. And for the second consecutive year, every book comes from an independent publisher, with four from tiny micropresses. Ahead of the winner announcement on 20 May, here’s our verdict on the shortlist….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 18, 1962 — Twilight Zone’s “I Sing The Body Electric”

They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone. — Intro narration.

On this date in 1962, The Twilight Zone aired “I Sing The Body Electric”. 

It was scripted by Ray Bradbury and although he had contributed several scripts to the series, this was the only one produced. (His first script, “Here There Be Tygers,” was accepted but never filmed.)

It became the basis for his 1969 short story of the same name, named after an 1855 Walt Whitman poem which celebrates the human body and its connection to the universe. It was according to Whitman anti-slavery. The original publication, like the other poems in Leaves of Grass, did not have a title. In fact, the line “I sing the body electric” was not added until the 1867 edition.

Bradbury’s short story would be published first in McCall’s, August 1969. Knopf would release his I Sing The Body Electric collection in October of that year. It’s been included in least fifty collections and anthologies.) 

James Sheldon and William F. Claxton directed the episode; Sheldon directed some of The Man from U.N.C.L.E episodes; Claxton is known for Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. I’ll confess to having seen a fair amount of the former but none of the latter. 

A large ensemble cast was needed as, minor spoiler alert, the primary cast here are shown at two ages, hence Josephine Hutchinson, David White, Vaughn Taylor, Doris Packer, Veronica Cartwright, Susan Crane and Charles Herbert all being performers even though the actual script calls for very few characters. 

Another spoiler alert. Perhaps I’m being overly cautious but we did get a complaint about spoiling a 50-year-old episode of a program by not noting that I was going to say something about that program, hence spoiler alerts for these programs.

Auntie, the organic one, caring for the children has decided they are too much of a burden and has decided to leave. So father decided to get a robot grandmother, a new fangled invention in their city. The mechanical grandmother after some resentment by one child is accepted by all after she saves one child from mortal injury and Serling says after that —

As of this moment, the wonderful electric grandmother moved into the lives of children and father. She became integral and important. She became the essence. As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues without thinking of her. Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel would remind them of her. She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical – like Grandma.

So this gentle tale that only Bradbury could write of the children who love her and the ever so wonderful mechanical grandmother ends with Serling saying the words scripted of course by Bradbury for him:

A fable? Most assuredly. But who’s to say at some distant moment there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother whose stock in trade is love? Fable, sure, but who’s to say?

This was the year that the entire season of the series won the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo at Chicon III. Just my opinion, but I think of all the nominees that it was clearly the far superior choice to win the Hugo. Really superior. 

It is streaming on Paramount+. 

There’s also a boy in the family but I couldn’t find an image of all three children, the father and the grandmother that was as good as this one is.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) EXPECT A CODA FOR THIS SEASON OF DOCTOR WHO. BBC Doctor Who reveals: “Special episode of Doctor Who: Unleashed announced celebrating 20 years of revival”.

Travel back with David Tennant, Billie Piper and host Steffan Powell through a host of Whoniversal history…

As Season 2 comes to a climax, a special edition of Doctor Who: Unleashed is set to air on BBC Three, BBC iPlayer and BBC Wales. Steffan Powell is once again set to take a trip through the time vortex as he invites viewers on a journey celebrating the last twenty years since Doctor Who returned, and he will be joined by a host of cast and creatives that have played a part in bringing the show back into the Whoniverse.

Joining Steffan for the ride are some of the show’s most recognisable faces, including past Doctors David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker, former companions Billie Piper, Pearl Mackie, and Mandip Gill, ex-showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, the current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa alongside his newest companion Varada Sethu, as well as the current showrunner and the man who brought the show back in 2005, Russell T Davies.

As well as chatting with the stars about what Doctor Who means to them, Steffan will be revealing secrets from behind the scenes with interviews with those who work behind the cameras to bring Doctor Who to life….

 (11) PRECURSORS? Facebook’s group for David Attenborough Fans discusses the Silurian Hypothesis.

…The idea of the Silurian Hypothesis was inspired by an episode of Doctor Who, where intelligent reptilian creatures called Silurians awakened from 400 million years of hibernation due to nuclear testing. While this was a work of fiction, the hypothesis raised a profound possibility: What if there were once other advanced civilizations on Earth that have completely vanished?

Humans often think that their existence and their civilization are eternal, but history teaches us otherwise. Take ancient Egypt, for instance. For over 3,000 years and across 30 dynasties, Egyptians lived under the shadow of the pyramids, fished the Nile, and mingled with other cultures. To them, their civilization seemed everlasting, yet it too disappeared. Similar fates befell the Mesopotamians, the Indus Valley civilization, the Greeks, Nubians, Persians, Romans, Incas, and Aztecs. These great empires, once thriving with millions, left behind scant evidence of their grandeur.

Modern humans have been around for about 100,000 years, a mere blip in the hundreds of millions of years that complex life has existed on Earth. Given this vast expanse of time, it’s conceivable that other intelligent species might have risen and fallen long before us. Would we even know they had been here?…

…The Silurian Hypothesis suggests looking for markers of industrialization on a global scale. One key marker is changes in the isotopic composition of elements, which can be detected in sedimentary layers. For instance, human activities have altered the nitrogen cycle and increased the levels of certain metals like gold, lead, and platinum. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels has changed the carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere, known as the Suess effect, which is detectable in sediment cores.

Interestingly, a sudden global change in carbon and oxygen isotope levels was observed 56 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM saw Earth’s temperature rise by six degrees Celsius over 200,000 years, with fossil carbon levels spiking. Some scientists speculate that a massive volcanic eruption caused this, but the exact cause remains unknown. Could it have been evidence of an ancient civilization? Probably not, but it does show how such an event could leave a detectable mark.

The Silurian Hypothesis, while not proving the existence of ancient civilizations, provides a framework for searching for them, not just on Earth but also on other planets. The Drake Equation estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, suggesting there could be anywhere from 150,000 to 1.5 billion. If intelligent life can arise multiple times on a single planet, as the Silurian Hypothesis proposes, it opens up exciting possibilities for finding civilizations throughout the galaxy….

(12) THE INSIDE (THE BOOKSHOP) STORY. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] The Howling (1981) Bookshop scene was filmed at the Cherokee Bookshop, which was on Cherokee just off of Hollywood Boulevard.  The wandering customer is Forry Ackerman.   

(13) PITCH MEETING. Ryan George takes us inside the “Thunderbolts* Pitch Meeting”.

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

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

Posted on by
17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Murderbot TV Series Review – Did They Get It Right?

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

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

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

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

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

…Key findings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 16, 1999 — The Phantom Menace

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

Wait, wrong universe, let’s try again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(10) COMICS SECTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 5/6/25 All I Need To Know, I Learned From Pixel Scrolls

Posted on by
20

(1) MORE SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 COVERAGE. Two of the more widely-read pop culture sites have picked up the story – and heavily cite File 770, for which I thank them.

Jason Sanford’s new Genre Grapevine is also devoted to the “2025 Seattle Worldcon AI Fallout”.

Yesterday Elizabeth Bear and Fran Wilde withdrew from the Worldcon program:

(2) BALTIMORE BOOK EVENT FAILS. “Broken promises, Fyre Festival vibes: A Million Lives Book Festival was a disaster” reports The Baltimore Banner.

In February, Philadelphia-area author Hannah Levin found out she’d been accepted to participate in A Million Lives Book Festival, a convention of fantasy authors, narrators and influencers to be held the first weekend of May at the Baltimore Convention Center. As a new author whose debut novel, “The Treasured One,” was published by Aethon Books in 2024, she was excited about the event. “We thought it would be a big thing for us,” she said.

It was a big thing, but not in the way anyone expected. The festival, organized by Baltimore-based author Grace Willows’ Archer Fantasy Events, was supposed to provide an opportunity for writers to network and an audience of at least 500 to 600 paid ticket holders. What participants got, they said, was a disappointing weekend of dashed expectations, unfulfilled promises, lost money and more questions than answers.

“I think ‘debacle’ is the word for it,” Levin said of the event that was quickly dubbed online as the Fyre Festival of literary festivals.

The 11 authors, vendors and influencers I interviewed by email and phone spent between $300 and $2,000 to attend A Million Lives depending on their travel arrangements and other factors. They said they were promised special badges that designated them as official participants, a creator’s lounge, cosplay events and a VIP swag bag for the top two ticketing levels.

That didn’t happen.

“There was a huge financial loss for authors, vendors and narrators attending,” wrote a book influencer known as Azthia, who spent about $300 on a plane ticket but crashed with other participants when her hotel stay was not paid for as promised. “They were told 600 tickets and in the end there were more authors than attendees.”…

(3) ACTOR/ACTRESS AWARDS? “’The Last Of Us’ Star Bella Ramsey Defends Gendered Emmy Categories” at Deadline.

Bella Ramsey has a decent shot at Emmy success this year — and won’t quibble if competing in the Lead Actress category.

The British star of HBO hit The Last of Us identifies as non-binary and prefers the they/them pronouns, but said it was fine for people to “call me how you see me.”

Speaking on Spotify’s The Louis Theroux Podcast about gendered award categories, Ramsey said it was important “recognition for women in the industry is preserved.”

“I don’t have the answer and I wish that there was something that was an easy way around it, but I think that it is really important that we have a female category and a male category,” Ramsey added.

The former Game of Thrones star said they had thought hard about how to represent non-binary individuals in award categories, but did not have a solution.

One idea was to name the category “best performance in a female character,” but Ramsey said this creates issues for those portraying non-binary characters on screen.

One thing Ramsey is certain of is that being called an “actress” feels uneasy. “I have a guttural, ‘That’s not quite right,’ instinct to it,” Ramsey said. “But I just don’t take it too seriously … it doesn’t feel like an attack on my identity.”…

(4) ROWLING ON HARRY POTTER ACTOR’S SUPPORT OF TRANS RIGHTS. “’I don’t have the power’: JK Rowling won’t sack Paapa Essiedu from Harry Potter TV show over trans rights views” reports the Guardian.

JK Rowling has said she will not fire actor Paapa Essiedu from the forthcoming Harry Potter TV series over his support for transgender rights.

Essiedu has been cast as key character Severus Snape in the HBO drama, which is designed to run for more than a decade and will be one of the most expensively produced television shows of all time.

In a post on X, Rowling wrote: “I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did. I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.”

Last week, Essiedu, along with more than 1,500 figures from film and TV, signed an open letter condemning the UK supreme court ruling, which judged that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex….

(5) CIVILIZATION ENDS: FILM AT ELEVEN. “Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?” from The Atlantic (Archive.ph link).

Last year, i visited the music historian Ted Gioia to talk about the death of civilization.

He welcomed me into his suburban-Texas home and showed me to a sunlit library. At the center of the room, arranged neatly on a countertop, stood 41 books. These, he said, were the books I needed to read.

The display included all seven volumes of Edward Gibbon’s 18th-century opus, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; both volumes of Oswald Spengler’s World War I–era tract, The Decline of the West ; and a 2,500-year-old account of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, who “was the first historian to look at his own culture, Greece, and say, I’m going to tell you the story of how stupid we were,” Gioia explained….

…He’s not alone in fearing that we’ve entered a cultural dark age. According to a recent YouGov poll, Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports. A 2023 story in The New York Times Magazine declared that we’re in the “least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.” An art critic for The Guardian recently proclaimed that “the avant garde is dead.”

What’s so jarring about these declarations of malaise is that we should, logically, be in a renaissance. The internet has caused a Cambrian explosion of creative expression by allowing artists to execute and distribute their visions with unprecedented ease. …

…in 312 c.e., the Roman Senate ordered the construction of a gaudy monument called the Arch of Constantine. It incorporated pieces from older monuments, built in more glorious times for the empire, which had begun its centuries-long decline.

The Arch is one of Gioia’s favorite metaphors for modern culture. The TV and film industry is enamored of reboots, spin-offs, and formulaic genre fare. Broadway theaters subsist on stunt-cast revivals of old warhorses; book publishers rely disproportionately on backlist sales. Entertainment companies have long understood the power of giving people more of what they already like, but recommendation algorithms take that logic to a new extreme, keeping us swiping endlessly for slight variations on our favorite things. In every sector of society, Gioia told me, “we’re facing powerful forces that want to impose stagnation on us.”

The problem is particularly acute in music. In 2024, new releases accounted for a little more than a quarter of the albums consumed in the U.S.; every year, a greater and greater percentage of the albums streamed online is “catalog music,” meaning it is at least 18 months old. Hoping to remonetize the classics, record labels and private-equity firms have spent billions of dollars to acquire artists’ publishing rights. The reemergence of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, 37 years after its release, seemed to signal that this was a good bet. A brief placement in a popular TV show (Netflix’s Stranger Things, itself a pastiche of 1980s movie tropes) could, it turned out, cause an old hit to outcompete most of the newer songs in the world….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 6, 1969 — Annalee Newitz, 56.

By Paul Weimer: I first encountered Annalee Newitz’ nonfiction, first, as a columnist, as a non fiction writer, as a podcaster with their partner Charlie Jane Anders. Four Lost Cities is an amazingly researched book looking at the rise and fall of four cities and what we can learn about the challenges they faced. I learned an amazing amount I never know about, for example, Angkor Wat. I think it is their strongest work and if you asked me “what one book of theirs should I read?”, Four Lost Cities is the one I’d put into your hands. 

Annalee Newitz

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was a surprisingly hopeful book, given its title and content. 

Although they have been writing fiction, too for a while, I finally got into their fiction with The Future of Another Timeline, with rival powers fighting for control of a timeline just catnip for me. Given the political changes lately in the United States, it feels even more relevant than it once did. And once again, I learned a lot about some historical events I hadn’t even heard of, thanks to the jumping around the timeline by the protagonists. But even with that, the changes to the timeline are not shown in some grand manner, but how they affect people. People matter to Newitz’s work. 

Newitz’ work is bright, well researched, deep, and thought provoking, with a mind like an engineer and the language and diction of an English professor. I am pretty sure that as good as Future was, I prefer Newitz’ nonfiction more, but I am primed for whatever they decide to turn their prodigious powers on, next. (In the meantime, of course, there is always Our Opinions are Correct). 

[Note: ISFDB and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia say Newitz’ birthday is today, Wikipedia says tomorrow. Happy birthday whichever is the case!)

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) HUGO VIEWING. In “Hugo 2025: The Wild Robot”, Camestros Felapton rates another finalist.

…As I said in the intro, the film has more bite than you might imagine. It’s not a nature documentary and their are kid-friendly fantasy elements to how the animals of the island live but aside from that the animals are presented naturalistically. There is a repeated emphasis on death as a common occurrence and the film is clear that animals kill and eat other animals. Fink the fox (the almost ubiquitous Pedro Pascal) is a key supporting character but when he first turns up he is trying to catch and eat Bright Bill, Roz’s adopted baby goose child.

The idea of juxtaposing robots with nature is not a new one but it is an under-explored one….

(9) VINTAGE PROPS. “Where Would Hollywood Find Its Guillotines or Pay Phones Without Them?” asks the New York Times. (Article is behind a paywall.)

When the Netflix series “Wednesday” needed a guillotine recently, it did not have to venture far. A North Hollywood prop house called History for Hire had one available, standing more than eight feet high with a suitably menacing blade. (The business offers pillories too, but the show wasn’t in the market for any.)

The company’s 33,000-square-foot warehouse is like the film and television industry’s treasure-filled attic, crammed with hundreds of thousands of items that help bring the past to life. It has a guitar Timothée Chalamet used in “A Complete Unknown,” luggage from “Titanic,” a black baby carriage from “The Addams Family.”

Looking for period detail? You can find different iterations of Wheaties boxes going back to the ’40s, enormous television cameras with rotating lenses from the ’50s, a hair dyer with a long hose that connects to a plastic bonnet from the ’60s, a pay phone from the ’70s and a yellow waterproof Sony Walkman from the ’80s….

… History for Hire, which Jim and Pam Elyea have owned for almost four decades, is part of the crucial but often unseen infrastructure that keeps Hollywood churning, and helps make it one of the best places in the world to make film and television.

“People just don’t realize how valuable a business like that is to help support the look of a film,” said Nancy Haigh, a set decorator who found everything from a retro can of pork and beans to a one-ton studio crane there for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which she won an Oscar for. “But it’s because people like them exist that your moviegoing experience has such life to it.”…

… “I don’t know what we would do without them,” said Pascale, who has won an Oscar for “Mank.”

No one likes entertaining that idea. But with fewer movies and television shows being shot in Los Angeles these days, and History for Hire getting less business, the Elyeas fear they may not be able to afford to renew their lease for five more years. If they close, Los Angeles will lose another piece of the vibrant ecosystem that has kept it attractive to filmmakers, even as states like Georgia and New Mexico lure productions with lucrative tax credits. Some Angelenos fear a vicious cycle: If the city continues to lose local talent and resources, even more productions will flee….

(10) SPEAKEASY. “AI-Dubbed Swedish Film ‘Watch the Skies’ Opening in Theaters” – Variety listens in.

When XYZ Films‘ “Watch the Skies” has its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, Hollywood will also get a glimpse at the state-of-the-art in AI-driven “visual dubbing” and its potential for Hollywood.

“Watch the Skies” is a sci-fi adventure filmed in Swedish (under the name “UFO Sweden”), but, uniquely, the actors will appear to be speaking English through the use of TrueSync, an AI visual dubbing tool from startup Flawless, which effectively syncs new (in this case, English language) dialogue with the actors’ mouth movements. The original actors recorded their lines in English as an ADR process, before the Flawless AI tech was applied to the movie….

(11) LEFT BEHIND. “Andor Leaves Out a Key Part of Star Wars Mythology, and I Think It’s Brilliant” says CBR.com.

While Andor enjoys effusive praise from critics and Star Wars fans, both usually fail to mention a key reason the series is so unique. The two-season Disney+ series is the first, and thus far only, story in the expansive saga aimed specifically at adult viewers. How Cassian Andor finds his way to the Rebellion meticulously examines the Star Wars political philosophy, which only works because it ignores an important aspect of the mythology: the Force. As a fan of both the political and spiritual allegory in this universe, I believe ignoring the latter makes the series absolutely brilliant….

(12) GETTING WITH THE TIMES. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki reminds readers:

(13) KEEPING THE AI IN SETI. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  I spotted this article pre-print on the Nature website. “AI scientist ‘team’ joins the search for extraterrestrial life”.

The collaborative system generated more than 100 hypotheses relating to the origins of life in the Universe.

 Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have created a system that can perform autonomous research in astrobiology, the study of the origins of life in the Universe.

AstroAgents comprises eight ‘AI agents’ that analyse data and generate scientific hypotheses. It joins a suite of other AI tools that aim to automate the process of science, from reading the literature to coming up with hypotheses and even writing papers….

…The result was 101 hypotheses from Gemini and 48 from Claude. One hypothesis posits that certain molecules found on Earth would make “reliable biomarkers” indicating the presence of life. Another suggests that a cluster of the organic molecules found in two meteorites might have formed through the same series of chemical reactions.

Buckner scored each hypothesis. She deemed 36 of the Gemini hypotheses to be plausible and 24 novel. By contrast, none of the Claude-generated hypotheses was original — but they were overall less error-prone and clearer than Gemini’s.

Primary research pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23170 

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

Pixel Scroll 5/4/25 Scroll The Other One—It’s Got Pixels On It!

Posted on by
11

(1) JUSTWATCH REVEALS THE MOST-STREAMED STAR WARS TITLES. JustWatch, the world’s leading streaming guide, released an exclusive report ahead of Star Wars Day (May the 4th), diving into the most-streamed titles across the Star Wars universe.

From the timeless legacy of George Lucas’ original trilogy to the power of Disney’s modern revival, JustWatch’s findings reveal how the Force continues to captivate American audiences.

Drawing from millions of data points collected from JustWatch users, the report uncovers the top-performing Star Wars films and series and how streaming preferences vary between generations of fans.

Key Findings

  • “The Mandalorian” Reigns Supreme: Disney+’s flagship series outperformed the original trilogy by over 25%, cementing its status as the most-watched Star Wars title.
  • Film Favorites Still Fly High: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back remains the most-streamed film from the Lucas-era classics, while The Rise of Skywalker leads among Disney’s theatrical releases.
  • Old vs. New: Though newer series like Ahsoka and Andor surged in popularity in 2024, the original trilogy collectively still held over 30% of the film streaming share.
  • Anakin Showdown: Hayden Christensen’s portrayal in the prequels has seen a resurgence, outpacing Jake Lloyd and even early Mark Hamill-led films in younger demographics.
  • Hidden Gems: Despite critical acclaim, Star Wars: Visions and The Book of Boba Fett landed among the least-streamed titles.

Methodology:  Streaming interest is based on JustWatch user activity globally, from 2019-April 28th, 2025, including interactions such as adding titles to watchlists, click-outs to streaming platforms, and filtering by service providers. JustWatch aggregates data from over 60 million monthly users across 140 countries.

(2) EFFECTIVENESS OF STATE PRODUCTION INCENTIVES. The New York Times asks, “When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?” (Behind a paywall.)

New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.

Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.

Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.

Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar….

… A recent study commissioned by Empire State Development, the agency that administers the tax credit, found that for every dollar handed out, about $1.70 was returned via local or state taxes, meaning the program was profitable for the state.

But many economists say these programs are money losers. A separate study commissioned by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance estimated a return of only 31 cents on the dollar….

…A recent survey of incentive programs by The New York Times estimated that states had paid out more than $25 billion over 20 years. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California cited the size of New York’s subsidies when he proposed increasing his state’s tax credits to $750 million from $330 million….

(3) THUNDERBOLTS* CHOICE QUESTIONED. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s Ben Child frets about introducing Sentry into the Marvelverse in the latest “Week in Geek” column: “Has Marvel shot itself in the foot by bringing superfreak Sentry into Thunderbolts*?”

Is there ever a right time to introduce into your superhero universe a psychologically unstable god-being with the potential to sneeze a continent off the map? It is probably not when – 17 years in – you are being accused of having lost half your audience to superhero fatigue. But that’s exactly what Marvel is doing this weekend as Thunderbolts* brings us Sentry, quite possibly the freakiest superhero to ever grace the comic book publisher’s hallowed pages. You thought Rocket Raccoon was weird and unhinged? Reckon Moon Knight is a bit of a handful? This guy makes them look like well-adjusted professionals with decent pensions.

(4) THE HANDMAID’S TALE Q&A. Leading into the show’s final season, in “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Wants to End With a Message of Hope” the New York Times hears from actors Yvonne Strahovski and Elizabeth Moss (who is also a producer and director on the series); Bruce Miller, the creator; Warren Littlefield, a producer; and Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman, the Season 6 showrunners. (Behind a paywall.)

…When you originally conceived of this show, how faithful to Margaret Atwood’s novel did you feel like you had to be?

BRUCE MILLER I first read “The Handmaid’s Tale” in college. I’m dyslexic, so I tend to read the same books over and over. Since it became one of my favorites, I didn’t want to mess it up in an adaptation. The key, for me, was not fealty to the book or Margaret as an artist — it was born out of the storytelling in the novel that had already stood up to a whole bunch of readings. There are parts in it that I have never understood.

ELISABETH MOSS Margaret’s tone is so specific to her voice and writing that it was really important for that to be part of the show. As a producer, if I’m sent something and someone says, “I don’t see how you make this into a film or a show.” I’m like, “Have you read ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’?” It’s a first-person narrative that follows one person’s perspective the entire way, has a ton of loose ends and ends abruptly with no explanation.

Like the book, the show often feels politically prophetic, but it is much more racially and culturally diverse. What were some of your priorities when it came to adapting the novel?

MILLER: I decided at the beginning that fertility would trump everything. That once the fertility rate went down by 95 percent, people’s racism, sexism and whatever-ism would slide. I was completely wrong, based on what happened in the last 10 years. That stuff is more intractable than I ever thought it was. But on a much more practical level, it didn’t make sense for me to, by following the book, keep a whole bunch of actors of color from working.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD We wanted it to be relevant. But if we’re going to resonate, then why not reflect the world we live in?

The show was developed during the Obama years and even then, we could see the radical right rising throughout the world and in the United States. Did we think that was going to settle into the White House? We didn’t. But when we were about to shoot Episode 4, we realized that No. 45 was going to be Donald J. [Trump], so we found ourselves doing this show at that time. Months later, Hulu purchased an ad spot for the show during the Super Bowl, it played twice, and then suddenly we were claimed as part of the resistance….

(5) THE FACE (BOOK) ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Steve Verlieb celebrates his release from Facebook jail.

One or ten of you may have noticed that I’ve been “Missing in Action” (M.I.A.) from Facebook for a fairly substantial amount of time.  Whether M.I.A., MS13, OR MSNBC, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been rotting away in Facebook prison without the benefit of legal defense for some time.  While incarcerated, I wasn’t even Afforded a Harrison or “Cell” phone with which to notify friends and family of my precarious circumstances.  My “crimes” included the audacity and utter indignity of sharing my own articles with others of like-minded affiliation and persuasion.  In the depths of my despair, I wasn’t even permitted to drown my virtual sorrow in the local prison “bars.”  I was surreptitiously removed from active recognition and participation on Unsocial Media by I.C.E. without the lawful declaration of my Lin-Manuel “Miranda” rights.

My eventual “sentence,” while not quite as long as a “paragraph,” was nonetheless both shameful and humiliating.  Denied the privilege of legal counsel, with not an active “Mason” in the “Big House,” not even Raymond Burr (or even Aaron Burr) could help me “Escape from Alcatraz.”  Despite the presence of some illustrious prison mates, like Charlie “Byrd,” man, with no strings attached, this proverbial “Jailhouse” did not “Rock.”  Not even my continuing letters and messages to friends and neighbors offered any semblance of appeal or hope of freedom, and so I fled into a “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” while desperately hiding the disgrace that “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.”

With an increasingly inflationary Writ for what I Wrote upon my head, the gavel ultimately sent me to the gravel under the cruel reign of Warden Zuckerberg.  It seemed that I’d become a permanent resident of “The Big House” when suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I was delivered a perhaps tentative reprieve, and allowed access to the burning blaze of freedom once more.  Free At Last, Free At Last, I was a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” having to re-learn the “dues” and don’ts, as well as the ins and outs, of safe navigation across the inflamed countryside of social media.  However, I must be up Front in my declaration of joy in being Back once more, and I sincerely hope that you’ll both forgive, and pardon my pardon … with “Biberty” and James Robertson Justice for All.

(6) JACK KATZ (1927-2025) In “Jack Katz, 1927-2025”, The Comics Journal profiles the late creator’s complete 60-plus-year career.

Artist/writer Jack Katz, whose ambitious indy epic, The First Kingdom, laid the groundwork in the 1970s for long-form graphic narratives like Cerebus, died April 24 at the age of 97. If he had not published that science-fantasy saga, it’s likely that Katz would have been regarded as just a journeyman artist, who tried — with little success — to make a living in comics. As it is, he will be remembered for his attempt, during the waning days of underground comics, to put out one of the first self-published graphic novels….

… After he moved to California, Katz encountered underground comics and realized that self-publishing would give him the freedom to craft his own stories and art without anyone dictating to him the direction and scope of his story or the pace at which he had to work, which was always an issue with the slow and meticulous Katz.

He began putting out The First Kingdom in 1974, published by Comics & Comix Co., which remained his publisher until 1977 (issues #1–6). Longtime book-dealer and fanzine-publisher Bud Plant took over publishing from 1977 until 1986, re-offering #2-6 and completing Katz’ first story cycle of 24 issues. Always a deliberate and diligent worker, Katz only put out two issues a year and wrote and drew every comic, never working with assistants. No one had ever done an independent comic book quite like The First Kingdom, and Katz’s efforts were praised in the pages of both Playboy magazine and the Rocket’s Blast Comicollector fanzine. Although the series had its fervent adherents, Katz’ fan base was never very large, because his comic book never had newsstand distribution and was only available by mail order, in comics shops or in head shops alongside underground comics like Zap Comics, Slow Death and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Its commercial appeal was also limited by the infrequency with which the title appeared and by its adult content, which restricted its venues.

The First Kingdom storyline was a fantasy/science-fiction hybrid, with a growing emphasis on the science fiction component by the sixth issue. It began in a primitive, post-nuclear world populated by barbaric peoples, anthropomorphic gods and strange monsters…. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 49.

Steampunk and mannerpunk, it’s time to talk about both, specifically that as written by our birthday author, Gail Carriger.  

Where to start? Her first novel, Soulless, is set in an alternate version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are members of proper society. Alexia Tarabotti is a wonderful created character that anyone would love to have an adventure with, as well as sit down with to high tea in the afternoon. 

The book begins the Parasol Protectorate series centered around her, which as of now goes on to have Changeless, Blameless, oh guess, Heartless and Timeless in it, plus one short story, “Meat Cute”. Why the latter broke the naming convention I know not.

Wait, wait, don’t tell me! — she’s done more mannerpunk. Indeed she has. There is Custard Protocol series (Prudence Imprudence, Competence and Reticence), also set in Parasol Protectorate universe. When Prudence “Rue” Alessandra Maccon Akeldama , a young woman with metahuman abilities, is left an unexpected dirigible in a will , she does what any sensible (ha!) alternative Victorian Era female would do — she names it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Need I say adventures of a most unusual kind follow? I really love this series and not just for the name of the series. It’s just fun. Really fun.

The Finishing School series is set in Parasol Protectorate universe. Again she has a delightful manner in naming her tales, Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry and Manners & Mutiny. Go ahead, I think you can figure what this series is about without me telling you. It’s delightful of course.

So I’m not that familiar with her other writing. It appears the two Delightfully Deadly novellas might have a tinge of romance in them though at least one also has dead husbands, four to be precise, lobsters and of course high society. Lobsters? 

The Claw & Courtship novellas are standalone stories set in the Parasol Protectorate universe. So far there’s just “How to Marry a Werewolf (In 10 Easy Steps)”, though she says there’ll be more.

Finally, I’ll note she did a SF series, the Tinkered Stars Universe series — how can this possibly be? — which she describes on her website as “a sexy alien police procedural on a space station”. Oh, that sounds so good. It consists of Divinity 36, Demigod 22, Dome 6, Crudat and The 5th Gender. 

Did she do short stories? Just six, of which I really want to read one — “The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar”.

Gail Carriger

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) THE SYNDICATE’S TAKIN’ OVER. Rick Marschall starts a series on newspaper syndication in “Yesterday’s Papers: An Inside Look Into The Bullpen Of Early Hearst Cartoonists”.

…The competition, particularly among their comics and cartoons, between Hearst and his rivals, had become so intense that some services had a surfeit of talent. By 1917 his comics operation filled the daily and Sunday pages of the dozen papers in the Hearst chain.  A few years earlier the Hearst organization had spun off Buster Brown, Little Nemo, Polly and Her Pals, and other strips under a purportedly rival umbrella, the Newspaper Feature Service. This enabled Hearst papers to run two comic sections every weekend, perhaps one on Saturday, or to provide Hearst rivals in certain cities with their own comic sections that didn’t appear to be generated by Hearst! (In New York City, for instance, Hearst’s deadly competitor the New York Tribune was able to run a four-page NFS color comic section that appeared to readers to be the Trib‘s own.)

By 1917, Hearst’s lieutenant Moses Koenigsberg split up the syndicate operations even further. Eventually there was King Features, a sort of holding company or sales agent for all the syndicates; Central Press Association; International Feature Service, Newspaper Feature Service; and others. The material we will be sharing here and over subsequent weeks is from a rare book published for prospective clients by the International Feature Service….

(10) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. Alvin!!!

(11) MURDERBOT SHOWRUNNERS Q&A. The Grue Rume Show interviews film makers Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. They write and direct Season 1 of Apple TV show MurderBot. “Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz talks Murderbot!!”

(12) ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD’S SWEDISH MOMENTS. The Swedish actor’s occasional use of his native language in otherwise English-language productions is celebrated in this interview conducted by Jonatan Blomberg from Moviezine: “Murderbot, Lady Gaga & True Blood”.

I had a truly awesome time with Alexander Skarsgård, one of our best Swedish actors right now! We spoke about the times he’s been bringing our Swedish language in to American productions – which is also the case (in one brief moment) in his new show Murderbot. Here he tries to remember the “krokodil” when skinny-dipping in True Blood and sharing a bed while chatting in Swedish with LADY GAGA in the Paparazzi music video.

(13) HOW THE LEAD CHOSE THIS ROLE. And if you haven’t had enough, Winter Is Coming also scored a few minutes with the lead: “Alexander Skarsgård: Murderbot EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!”

Winter Is Coming’s Daniel Roman sits down with Murderbot star Alexander Skarsgård to talk about becoming the SecUnit at the heart of Apple’s new comedic sci-fi series, how he embodied the character, and guilty TV pleasures.

(14) THEY DON’T LISTEN TO GURATHIN. This interview with the actor who plays Gurathin has much deeper insights into the series, plus clips: “David Dastmalchian talks ‘Murderbot’ and more: A blockbuster year for the versatile star” at Pix11 News.

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