Tag Archives: Superman

Pixel Scroll 4/6/25 Always Check Where You’re Walking When Pixels Are Present

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(1) 2025 HUGO AWARD FINALISTS. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Hugo Award Finalists were announced today.

Congratulations to all the finalists, especially the authors of two Best Related entries published by File 770, Chris Barkley and Jason Sanford for “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” and Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones for “Charting the Cliff: An Investigation Into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”.

(2) HUGO AWARD BASE DESIGNER. Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced that the Hugo Awards Base will be designed by Joy Alyssa Day, a professional glass sculpture artist. Joy, with her partner BJ, have previously designed the Hugo Awards base for LonCon in 2014. Examples of Joy’s sculptures can be found at her website, GlassSculpture. Below are photos of the 2014 Hugo Award base, and their work on the Cosmos Award given by the Planetary Society.

(3) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 132 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Almost Everything Is Not Mac” is here early, because the hosts John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty are discussing this year’s Hugo Awards finalists.

An uncorrected transcript is available here.

A black background. Text in purple reads “Octothorpe 132” while text MADE OF FIRE says “Scorching hot takes on the Hugo finalists”.

(4) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman returns with episode 22 of his Why Not Say What Happened? Podcast, “The Conundrum of Condensing Marie Severin into 1,200 Words”. And here’s where it’s available on multiple platforms.

This time around, I grow anxious over a dream discovery of long-lost original comic book artwork, realize I was wrong about a certain Alan Moore/Frank Miller memory, contemplate the difficulty of condensing the life of Marie Severin into a mere 1,200 words, share the meager remains of what was once a massive comic book collection, remember there’s an issue of Fantastic Four I need to track down to solve an early fannish mystery, rededicate myself to Marie Kondo-ing my creative life, and more.

A 1972 Marie Severin Hulk Sketch

(5) FISHING FOR A SUPERSTAR. “Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies is manifesting DC star Viola Davis being the next iteration of the villainous Master, calling her ‘one of the greatest actors in the world’” at GamesRadar+.

Given that beloved sci-fi series Doctor Who has been on air for over 60 years now, countless actors have featured either in major roles or as guest stars.

From Simon Pegg playing a villainous editor in ‘The Long Game’ to Andrew Garfield facing off against aliens in ‘Daleks in Manhattan’, the seemingly endless list also includes Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya, Oscar winner Olivia Colman, and Black Panther’s very own Letitia Wright – to name but a few.The question is then – who would showrunner Russell T Davies love to have on the series in a guest role, who hasn’t been featured before? Putting that to the man himself in a recent interview ahead of Doctor Who season 2 hitting our screens, Davies is puzzled at first admitting to GamesRadar+ that “almost everyone has been in it”. And he’s right – hell, even pop star icon Kylie Minogue even showed up for the Titanic themed episode ‘Voyage of the Damned’….

…As Davies tells us: “I simply worship Viola Davis, one of the greatest actors in the world, we should be so lucky we should have that money. She just brings quality, depth, and surprise. Every time I see her she does something surprising, which is a very Doctor Who quality. She’d get it. I say this hoping that you print it, then her agent will read it and say ‘yes, you can have Viola for absolutely no money, she will come to Cardiff for free.'” Well – here’s hoping!

(6) BOOP-OOP-A-DOOP! “’Boop!’ Arrives on Broadway, With a Surprising 100-Year Back Story” reports the New York Times. Link bypasses paywall.

Betty Boop has arrived on Broadway, nearly a century after she first boop-oop-a-dooped her way onto the big screen. “Boop! The Musical,” like the “Barbie” and “Elf” films that preceded it, imagines a transformational encounter between an anthropomorphic character and the real world (well, a fictional world full of people)….

…Jasmine Amy Rogers, the actress starring as Betty Boop on Broadway, described her as “full of joy” and “unapologetically herself.” “She is sexy, but I don’t think it is merely sex that makes her sexy,” she continued. “I would say it’s the way she carries herself, and her confidence and her unabashed self.”…

Betty, created at the height of the Jazz Age, is obviously modeled on flappers, and her relationship to music history has been a subject of debate and litigation.

In 1932, a white singer named Helen Kane sued, alleging that the “baby vamp” style of the Betty Boop character, including the “boop-oop-a-doop” phrase, was an unlawful imitation of Kane. At a widely publicized trial in 1934, Fleischer countered by pointing out that a Black singer, Esther Lee Jones, who performed as Baby Esther, had used similar scat phrases before Kane. Kane lost….

…Rogers said she hopes that over time, women of different ethnicities will portray the character, but said she is proud to play her as a Black woman, with nods to Baby Esther and the scat technique of jazz singing. “Jazz lives so deep in the heart of Betty that I feel as if we can’t really have a full discussion about her without involving the African American race,” she said…

(7) GOOD DOG. Krypto takes us home: “Superman | Sneak Peek”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 88.

Rather obviously, Billy Dee Williams’ best-known role is as — and no I did know this was his full name — Landonis Balthazar “Lando” Calrissian III. He was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back as a longtime friend of Han Solo and the administrator of the floating Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin. 

(So have I mentioned, I’ve only watched the original trilogy, and this is my favorite film of that trilogy? If anyone cares to convince me I’ve missed something by not watching the later films, go ahead.) 

He is Lando in the original trilogy, as well in as the sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, thirty-six years later. The Star Wars fandom site thinks this might be the longest interval between first playing a character and later playing the same character, being a thirty-six year gap.

He returned to the role within the continuity in the animated Star Wars Rebels series, voicing the role in “Idiot’s Array” and “The Siege of Lothal” episodes. Truly great series if you haven’t seen, and available of course on Disney+. 

He voiced him in two audio dramas with one being the full cat adaption of Timothy Zahn’s Dark Empire. 

Now this is where it gets silly, really silly. The most times he’s been involved with the character is in the Lego ‘verse. Between 2024 with The Lego Movie to Billy Dee Williams returned to the role in the Star Wars: Summer Vacation in 2022, he has voiced Lando in eight Lego films, mostly made as television specials.

Going from hero to villain, he was Harvey Dent in Batman, and yes in The Lego Batman Movie. Really they made it. I’d like to say I remember him here but than they would admitting this film made an impression on me which it decidedly didn’t. None of the Batman Films did in the Eighties.

He’s in Mission Impossible as Hank Benton, an enforcer for a monster, in “The Miracle” episode; he’s Ferguson in  Epoch: Evolution, the sequel to Epoch, which looks like quite silly, and I’m using this term deliberately, sci-film, and finally he voiced himself on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?,  the thirteenth television series in the Scooby-Doo franchise. 

Billy Dee Williams

(9) COMICS SECTION.

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-04-06T11:46:12.460Z

(10) WHY ARE KIDS OBSESSED WITH THE TITANIC? “So You Think You Know a Lot About the Titanic …” in the New York Times (behind a paywall.)

Parents often look down at the whorl on the top of their children’s heads and wonder what, exactly, is going on inside. An industry of books, video games, films, merchandise and museums offers some insight: They’re probably thinking about the Titanic.

Last fall, Osiris, age 5, told his mother, Tara Smyth, that he wanted to eat the Titanic for dinner. So she prepared a platter of baked potatoes — each with four hot-dog funnels, or smokestacks — sitting on a sea of baked beans. (He found it delicious.) Since first hearing the story of the Titanic, Ozzy, as he’s known, has amassed a raft of factoids, a Titanic snow globe from the Titanic Belfast museum and many ship models at his home in Hastings, England.

About 5,500 miles away in Los Angeles, Mia and Laila, 15-year-old twins, devote hours every week to playing Escape Titanic on Roblox. They have been doing this for the last several years. Sometimes, they go down with the ship on purpose — “life is boring,” explained Mia, “and the appeal is that it’s kind of dramatic.”

Nearly 113 years after the doomed White Star Line steamship collided with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank at around 2:20 a.m. the next day, it remains a source of fascination for many children. The children The New York Times spoke to did not flinch at the mortal fact at the heart of the story: That of the more than 2,200 passengers on the Titanic, more than twice as many passengers died as those who survived.

“I really like whenever it just cracked open in half and then sank and then just fell apart into the Atlantic Ocean,” said Matheson, 10, from Spring, Texas, who has loved the story since he read “I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912” at age 5. After many frustrating bath time re-enactments involving flimsy ship models, Matheson and his father, Christopher Multop, designed a Tubtastic Titanic bath toy — of which they say they now sell about 200 a month (separate floating iceberg included)….

John Zaller, the executive producer of Exhibition Hub, the company that designed “Bodies: The Exhibition” and “Titanic: An Immersive Voyage,” a traveling exhibition with interactive elements, attested that Titanic kids often knew more than their tour guides. At the Titanic experience, children can sit in a lifeboat and watch a simulation of the ship sinking, see a life-size model of the boiler room be flooded with water, and follow along with the passengers on their boarding pass, ultimately finding out whether they survived the wreck.

“The biggest takeaway for kids is, ‘I lived!’ or ‘I died!’” Mr. Zaller said. “They understand the power of that.”…

(11) APRIL FOOLISHNESS. Except it happened in March: “An AI avatar tried to argue a case before a New York court. The judges weren’t having it” at Yahoo!

It took only seconds for the judges on a New York appeals court to realize that the man addressing them from a video screen — a person about to present an argument in a lawsuit — not only had no law degree, but didn’t exist at all.

The latest bizarre chapter in the awkward arrival of artificial intelligence in the legal world unfolded March 26 under the stained-glass dome of New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, where a panel of judges was set to hear from Jerome Dewald, a plaintiff in an employment dispute.

“The appellant has submitted a video for his argument,” said Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels. “Ok. We will hear that video now.”

On the video screen appeared a smiling, youthful-looking man with a sculpted hairdo, button-down shirt and sweater.

“May it please the court,” the man began. “I come here today a humble pro se before a panel of five distinguished justices.”

“Ok, hold on,” Manzanet-Daniels said. “Is that counsel for the case?”

“I generated that. That’s not a real person,” Dewald answered.

It was, in fact, an avatar generated by artificial intelligence. The judge was not pleased.

“It would have been nice to know that when you made your application. You did not tell me that sir,” Manzanet-Daniels said before yelling across the room for the video to be shut off….

… As for Dewald’s case, it was still pending before the appeals court as of Thursday.

(12) ONCE FICTION, NOW SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian reports “Biologist whose innovation saved the life of British teenager wins $3m Breakthrough prize”. Harvard Professor, David Liu —  

 … was chosen for inventing two exceptionally precise gene editing tools, namely base editing and prime editing. Base editing was first used in a patient at Great Ormond Street in London, where it saved the life of a British teenager with leukaemia.

The young woman’s doctor apparently called the technique at the time, ‘science fiction’!

(13) ETERNAUT TRAILER. The Eternaut premieres on Netflix on April 30.

After a deadly snowfall kills millions, Juan Salvo and a group of survivors fight against a threat controlled by an invisible force. Based on the iconic graphic novel written by Héctor G. Oesterheld and illustrated by Francisco Solano López.

(14) WHY IS MARS RED? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Well, we all know the answer – an on-going process of the radiolysis of water (here UV and high energy particles from Solar wind splitting water) produces oxygen radicals that oxidise iron to hematite (a form of iron(III) that on Earth often gives some sandstones their red colour…)  Well, maybe not!   New research now suggests otherwise.  Data from three orbiters combined with a look at Earth minerals suggests that the Martian red minerals were formed over three billion years ago when Mars was decidedly wet. Had Mars been warmer, then these minerals would have gone. ; Mars’ red colour looks like being ferrihydrite (Fe5O8H  nH2O) that forms under decidedly wet conditions.  This is yet more evidence – if more is needed – that Mars was wet billions of years ago. 

The primary research, by French, US and British based astrophysicists, is  Valantinas, A. et al (2025) “Detection of ferrihydrite in Martian red dust records ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars”. Nature Communications, vol. 16, 1712. Meanwhile over at DrBecky there is a 12-minute video which you can see here: “New study explains why Mars is RED”. I keep on telling people that the machines are taking over but nobody ever listens to me… In fact they rule Mars!

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

Pixel Scroll 3/5/25 When You’re In Love With A Scrollable Pixel It’s Hard

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(1) DREAMHAVEN BOOKS IN THE NEWS. “Bad author behavior forces decisions on Minnesota booksellers” the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has learned.

…Many years ago, DreamHaven Books owner Greg Ketter was disturbed by misogynistic statements from John Norman, who wrote a book series about a different kind of monster, the “Gor” fantasy books. Ketter took them off the Minneapolis store’s shelves for a time but ended up restocking them when customers requested them.

About a dozen Gaiman titles remain at DreamHaven, although his presence isn’t as big as it once was. That’s largely because Gaiman has been more involved in filmmaking than novel writing in recent years (after the allegations became public, a planned Disney movie of “The Graveyard Book” was put on hold, although several completed film and TV shows are expected to be released eventually. He’s also been dropped by a U.K. publisher and a “Coraline” musical has been scrapped).

“We had a huge section for Neil Gaiman for years but it had been slowing down, so we were just moving things around when everything came out in the news,” said Ketter, who published some of Gaiman’s early work. “We are still selling some of his books and things. We just leave it up to people. If they keep buying books, we keep them on the shelves.”

The attitude is different at Avant Garden, “an unapologetically feminist and LGBTQIA-inclusive” business, according to owner Jenni Hill. Because it was created as a welcoming space for all kinds of people, Hill said, “We strive to carry books in-store that reflect our values.”

That means Avant Garden, which opened about four years ago, has never stocked Rowling titles, which Hill worries might trigger trans customers and their allies: “I don’t want anyone to feel I would advocate for a writer who has been hurtful to our community.”

That’s also why Avant Garden stopped carrying Gaiman titles as soon as the allegations came out.

“I texted Emily, our employee, ‘Let’s remove his books.’ That was literally the whole discussion,” said Hill. “It just doesn’t feel right to profit from those books. And I’d already bought the books, so I will lose money on those. But I won’t restock them for sure.”…

(2) DID YOU NOTICE SOMETHING’S MISSING? Zach Weinersmith tells Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal readers he’s cut ties with Hiveworks and that’s why for the moment there are no ads on his site. He also explains some things about the business dynamics of advertising in social media.

(3) LIBBY AWARDS. People magazine’s list of the 2025 Libby Awards winners includes many works of genre interest.

…Hosted by library lending apps OverDrive and Libby, the prize, now in its second year, honors the best books published in 2024, as chosen by librarians and library staff.

Debut Author of the Year
The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley – Winner

Best Fantasy
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst – Winner
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo – Runner-Up

Best Horror
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle – Winner
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones – Runner-Up

Best Romantasy
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas – Winner
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi – Runner-Up

Best Science Fiction
The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley – Winner
The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei – Runner-Up

(4) DOES DOCTOR WHO EVER REALLY ARRIVE AT THE WRONG TIME? [Item by Kathy Sullivan.] This German trailer of the next season of Doctor Who briefly appeared and then was taken down supposedly because it was meant to be released at the end of March.  It includes much of the content from the Season 2 trailer released a few days ago, but has additional bits: “German Doctor Who Trailer Staffel 2 Disney+”.

(5) AI RIGHTS. “’Sign our own death warrant’: Australian writers angry after Melbourne publisher asks them to sign AI agreements” reports the Guardian.

Australian writers, literary agents, and the industry’s peak body have expressed concern after Black Inc Books asked its authors to consent to their work being used to train artificial intelligence.

The Melbourne publisher, which produces the Quarterly Essay as well as fiction and nonfiction by prominent Australian writers, gave them until Wednesday to enter into third-party agreements with an unnamed AI company.

The writers were asked to grant Black Inc “the right to reproduce or use, adapt and exploit the work in connection with the development of any software program, including, without limitation, training, testing, validation and the deployment of a machine learning or generative artificial intelligence system”.

Under the deal the publisher will split the net receipts with the author 50/50.

The Guardian has confirmed that a number of writers published by Black Inc received the request to alter their contracts last week.

The documents sent by the company’s publishing coordinator promise that, by authorising their works to be used by an unspecified AI company, authors would unlock “new revenue streams” with their works receiving “increased visibility and credibility”.

“I feel like we’re being asked to sign our own death warrant,” said Laura Jean McKay, author of Holiday in Cambodia, published with Black Inc a decade ago and shortlisted for three literary awards.

McKay says she had received the addendum to her contract on Friday, and was worried that three business days was not long enough to decipher what Black Inc was asking her to sign….

(6) BROTHER GUY AT SF CONS. The Vatican Observatory blog has a post by Robert Trembley about Brother Guy Consolmagno attending Boskone, just the latest of many he’s been at. The article includes a link to Daniel Dern’s Boskone post here, plus one of his photos of Brother Guy.

Br. Guy attended a science fiction convention over the weekend of Feb. 14-16 in Boston, where he met with friends, and autographed copies of his books….

…Br. Guy was introduced to me by mutual friends at a WindyCon (an SF Con in Chicago) in the mid-90’s – he was curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory at the time, and he spoke about the science of meteoritics, and how he was studying meteorites from the VO’s impressive collection. He completely blew me away! I walked away with a entirely different view of the “cool rocks from space” I’d been collecting for a couple years. Br. Guy continues to WOW people with meteorites, as he did at the recent L.A. Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, California.

(7) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman twenty-first episode of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast remembers “My Long Weekend Annoying MAD Magazine Publisher Bill Gaines”. You can also download episodes at the site of your choice.

My latest look back at what I was doing in comics during the ’70s has me remembering the weekend I couldn’t stop myself from teasing Bill Gaines about the National Lampoon‘s satirical slam of MAD magazine, why famed con-runner Phil Seuling castigated us fans one afternoon for mistreating our mothers, the words Gerry Conway wrote for Daredevil’s girlfriend Karen Page in the basement of a Times Square Nathan’s, how my 1980 DC Comics vampire story ended up as a 1987 episode of Tales from the Darkside, the continuing mystery of the martial arts series I’d forgotten I’d tried to write for Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (and what Tony Stark had to do with it), and much more.

(8) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present: Jedediah Berry & Victoria Dalpe on Wednesday, March 12. Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003, (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs). Starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Jedediah Berry

Jedediah Berry’s latest novel, The Naming Song, was described in a starred Library Journal review as “a wonderfully odd ode to language, story, and family.” His first book, The Manual of Detection, won the Crawford Award and the Hammett Prize, and was adapted for broadcast by BBC Radio 4. He is the author of numerous games and interactive works, including a story in cards, The Family Arcana, and the Ennie Award-winning RPG setting The Valley of Flowers (co-written with Andrew McAlpine). He lives in Western Massachusetts with his partner Emily Houk, with whom he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction in unusual formats.

Victoria Dalpe

Victoria Dalpe is a Providence-based horror writer and painter. She has published over forty-five short stories in various collections, the gothic horror novel Parasite Life and the short story collection Les Femme Grotesques. “Dalpe’s horror stories are equal parts intriguing, compelling, and appropriately macabre,”—Rue Morgue. Book one of her dark horror fantasy series Selene Shade: Resurrectionist for Hire was released September of 2024 by Clash Books. Book two in the trilogy, Loving the Dead will be out this fall. Dalpe was also a producer on the drag queen slasher film Death Drop Gorgeous. For upcoming events follow her on Instagram at victorialdalpe

(9) TURING AWARD. “Turing Award Goes to 2 Pioneers of Artificial Intelligence”, Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton. The New York Times has the story (behind a paywall.)

In 1977, Andrew Barto, as a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, began exploring a new theory that neurons behaved like hedonists. The basic idea was that the human brain was driven by billions of nerve cells that were each trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

A year later, he was joined by another young researcher, Richard Sutton. Together, they worked to explain human intelligence using this simple concept and applied it to artificial intelligence. The result was “reinforcement learning,” a way for A.I. systems to learn from the digital equivalent of pleasure and pain.

On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that Dr. Barto and Dr. Sutton had won this year’s Turing Award for their work on reinforcement learning. The Turing Award, which was introduced in 1966, is often called the Nobel Prize of computing. The two scientists will share the $1 million prize that comes with the award.

Over the past decade, reinforcement learning has played a vital role in the rise of artificial intelligence, including breakthrough technologies such as Google’s AlphaGo and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The techniques that powered these systems were rooted in the work of Dr. Barto and Dr. Sutton.

“They are the undisputed pioneers of reinforcement learning,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington and founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “They generated the key ideas — and they wrote the book on the subject.”

Their book, “Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction,” which was published in 1998, remains the definitive exploration of an idea that many experts say is only beginning to realize its potential.

(10) GEORGE LOWE (1957-2025). TVLine reports “George Lowe Dead, Voice of Space Ghost Age 67”.

George Lowe, a veteran voice actor whose credits include the title role in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, died on March 2 at age 67, a spokesperson confirms for TVLine…

…An alumnus of the Radio Engineering Institute of Sarasota, Lowe began his career in the 1980s with occasional voiceover work, before landing the title role in Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost Coast to Coast. A send-up of talk shows that featured live-action celebrity guests, the animated series would run for 10 years and more than 100 episodes, including a move to Adult Swim and a brief revival via Turner Broadcasting’s GameTap online video game service…

… Lowe also voiced Space Ghost in the 1995 spinoff Cartoon Planet, the 2007 movie Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters and in the 2011 video game Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion.

His voice acting credits also include The Brak Show, Robot Chicken, Squidbillies and American Dad…

(11) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Stranger in a Strange Land (1962)

Sixty-three years ago at Chicon III where Earl Kemp was the Chair, Wilson Tucker was Toastmaster and Theodore Sturgeon was the Guest of Honor, Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land won the Hugo for Best Novel. It had been published the previous year by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 

Other nominated works that year were Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye, Sense of Obligation (also called Planet of the Damned) by Harry Harrison, The Fisherman (also known as Time Is the Simplest Thing) by Clifford D. Simak and Second Ending by James White.  I know all those authors and have read deeply of them save Daniel F. Galouye. Tell me about him please. 

It was his third Hugo in six years after Double Star at NyCon II and Starship Troopers at Pittcon. He’d win his fourth and final Hugo for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress at NyCon 3 in another five years.

The working title for the book was A Martian Named Smith which was also the name of the screenplay started by a character at the end of the novel. 

I must note Jubal Harshaw for me is the most interesting and enjoyable character in the book, an older experienced man who questioned everything, but with compassion, honor and a truly open heart. Harshaw also appears in three later Heinlein novels, The Number of the Beast in the coda, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset which I’ll confess I never finished. 

Needless to say the novel is available from the usual suspects. There’s also an audiobook, one of myriad audiobooks done of his novels. 

As always the artwork below is for the first edition. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • xkcd explains a homeowner’s risk of water damage.
  • Brewster Rockit relays a broadcast of the Cat News Network.
  • Bizarro is in on the bust.
  • Free Range discovers why returning to Kansas wasn’t easy.
  • Herman is on the track. Or vice versa.
  • WaynoVision has a variation on a monster.

(13) ‘KIRBYVISION’ DOCUMENTARY PLANNED. Acclaimed documentary film director Ricki Stern (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, UFOs: Investigating the Unknown) will be helming Kirbyvision – a feature length documentary telling the story of the legendary Jack Kirby.

Kirby is widely regarded as one of the comic book medium’s most innovative, prolific, and influential creators. At the height of his nearly six decade career, Kirby created or co-created many of Marvel’s major characters including Captain America (with Joe Simon), the Avengers, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Thor, the X-Men, and countless others (with comics impresario Stan Lee). 

He worked similar magic for DC Comics, where he created the sprawling, psychedelic “Fourth World,” a series of political and psychedelic sci-fi epics often considered his most ambitious work. His creations as writer, artist, and editor include Darkseid, Mister Miracle, OMAC, The Demon, and many others who are mainstays of DC’s publishing and screen projects to this day. 

Ricki Stern says: “Jack was not only one of the great comic book artists of all time, but a true visionary genius. In this new feature length documentary, we actively campaign for the recognition he finally deserves as a leading artist and storyteller of the 20th Century.”

Kirby drew his way out of an impoverished, Depression-era upbringing when he co-created Captain America, who brazenly punched out Adolf Hitler on the cover of his very first comic, months before the US had entered World War II. He was soon sent into real combat on the frontlines of the war in Europe, a harrowing experience which had a significant impact on his later work. Kirby’s astounding career touched virtually every genre, including war, romance, westerns, science fiction, horror, and, of course, superheroes. His impact is felt beyond comics to this day everywhere from animation to music to blockbuster films.

(14) FUTURIAN WAR DIGEST. Polygon recalls “How a WWII fanzine helped sci-fi survive the Blitz and beyond”. A 2019 article, but timeless.

…The cost of a mimeograph machine may have been high, but the cost of not talking to each other was higher — even in some of the most dire moments of the 20th century. The oldest zine included in As If is also the longest running fanzine to remain in distribution in Britain throughout the course of the second World War: Futurian War Digest, or FIDO, which printed from October 1940 until March 1945.

FIDO reviewed science fiction works and reflected on the fragile state of the fan community in the United Kingdom during wartime. The first issue of the zine, which was published and distributed less than a month after the start of the London bombing raids known as The Blitz, made a point of announcing the conscription of fan William F. Temple and the death on active duty of sci-fi enthusiast Edward Wade. These sombre announcements ran alongside musings about John Carter of Mars.

In a time of great uncertainty, publisher J. Michael Rosenblum said in the pages of FIDO that his self-avowed goal was to “a) to give news of and to fandom, b) to keep burning those bright mental constellations possessed by all fans.” The publication was created just as much to be an archive and time capsule as a source of entertainment, news, and distraction. By publishing the fanzine, Rosenblum recorded the history of a subculture of science fiction enthusiasts, and helped to keep a community that was being actively ripped apart together.

(15) SUPERMAN’S SPIRIT. Distilled, that is. Onward Giants is hustling the “Limited Edition Super Bottle”.

The Limited Edition Superman Whiskey Bottle is a meticulously crafted collectible designed for fans of both Superman and fine whiskey. Each bottle embodies the timeless power and spirit of Superman, making it not just a bottle of whiskey, but a unique piece of art and a symbol of heroism. This limited edition release is a must-have for collectors and superhero enthusiasts alike.

A Tribute to Superman’s Spirit
Superman represents courage, justice, and hope, and this whiskey bottle captures his essence. The iconic “S” emblem and the heroic silhouette of Superman are artistically integrated into the design, making every bottle a tribute to the hero who has inspired generations.

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

Pixel Scroll 2/10/25 The Filer Who Sold Another Moon-Based Title

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(1) HUGO HUNTING SEASON STARTS. The Seattle Worldcon today declared “2025 Hugo Nominations Open”.

I went and looked at their “Nominations Eligibility” page. All useful information. However, I was surprised to see how long the Best Series eligibility section needed to be in order to explain the restrictions on past winners (no longer eligible) and on renominating past finalists (in general, at least two additional installments in the series consisting of at least 240,000 words in aggregate must have been published between the end of that finalist’s last eligibility year and December 31, 2024).

(2) SUPERKERFUFFLE. [Item by Dann.] Superman actor Dean Cain has become the focal point of a kerfuffle on X.com. 

On February 8, ScreenRant posted to X.com a photo of six actors who have portrayed Superman.

The next day DCU World – apparently an unofficial fan account — posted a modified version of the same image. The significant difference was that Dean Cain had been edited out.

Fans of Dean Cain have been pointing out the omission ever since.

And Dean Cain cast a jaundiced eye on the change.

Why would someone do this? Possibly because Dean Cain is a vocal Trump supporter. Or because in 2021 he slammed DC Comics’ decision to have Superman come out as bisexual.

…“They said it’s a bold new direction, I say they’re bandwagoning,” the 55-year-old actor told Fox & Friends First on Tuesday. “Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave….

This was George Takei’s reaction at the time:

(3) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Scott Edelman recalls “The Day I Should Have Defended Herb Trimpe” in Episode 18 of his Why Not Say What Happened? podcast.

Another look back on my early comics career has me considering the possible reason Robert De Niro’s Max Cady character cared about Captain Marvel in the 1991 movie Cape Fear, the day Jim Shooter and I parachuted out of an airplane (and why an ambulance was called), my surprise over a 1974 House of Mystery submission to editor Joe Orlando, why 2025 Scott is curious about what Crystal leaving the Fantastic Four meant to the 1970 fanboy I was, the reason Doc Savage and Scooter Pies are inextricably linked in my memory, my regret over not having defended artist Herb Trimpe from his detractors, and much more.

Here’s where all episodes across all platforms can be found — Why Not Say What Happened? [Click below for larger image.]

A F.O.O.M. article about my jump with Jim Shooter

(4) ANTON HUR Q&A. “Mandana Chaffa uses the otherworldly premise of Anton Hur’s novel Toward Eternity as a springboard to discuss Hur’s path to translation, community, and immortality” — “’Making Space for Each Other’: Anton Hur on Toward Eternity, Translation, and Immortality” at Words Without Borders.

MC: I’ve long admired your advocacy and generosity for the art and its practitioners by supporting translators’ rights, providing guidance, and, of course, being part of the Smoking Tigers. Is this a golden age of translation? I know we’ve been talking about eternity, but what do you hope to see more of in the present?

AH: I got a bizarre message recently from a Korean translators collective who said they were launching and had no wish to compete with Smoking Tigers. It was an odd thing to say to me. The whole reason we set up Smoking Tigers was to collaborate with each other, and our policy has always been to encourage the rise of a thousand translator collectives, but perhaps because we have been so spectacularly successful as individual translators, people have this notion of Smoking Tigers as being the Bene Gesserit or something. We’re just very close friends who happen to be in the same industry and occasionally workshop together. It’s not that special— anyone can make a collective! We just happen to be one of the earliest, that’s all. I’m often told that I’m an advocate for translators, which is very kind of people to say, but my advocacy is very self-serving. I mean, I am literally a literary translator myself, so if I’m advocating for literary translators, doesn’t that mean I’m essentially advocating for myself? Even when I see a great sample someone else did in a workshop and try to connect that translator to an editor I think would be interested in it, that’s because I believe that only by making an effort to publish the best translations can the ecosystem—and myself—truly thrive. There are so many great translators out there with wonderful projects, and I want to see them published, and yet publishing is so inefficient in finding these gems. If I can step into the breach, I try to, for the sake of the ecosystem and, by extension, myself. It’s all about me in the end; I don’t think much beyond that….

(5) INCITEFUL? “Israeli Police Raid Palestinian Bookshops in East Jerusalem” reports the New York Times (article is behind a paywall).

For decades, the Educational Bookshop has been a cultural cornerstone of East Jerusalem, its two outlets hosting foreign diplomats, feting prominent authors and providing readers with both sides of the story in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

This weekend, the Israeli police raided the stores and arrested their two owners after concluding that books being sold there — including a children’s coloring book — could incite violence. The police said they seized a number of books in the raids on Sunday.

The shops were initially closed on Monday, but later opened despite a judge ordering the brothers who own the stores, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, to remain in detention until Tuesday morning amid a police investigation. They were also ordered to be held under house arrest for five days following their release and banned from returning to their bookshops for 15 days.

Murad Muna, a brother of the two owners who reopened one of the stores on Monday afternoon, denied that the books sold there promoted violence. In fact, he said, the books passed Israeli censors when they were imported from abroad.

“We believe that this is a political, not a legal detention,” the lawyer for the two arrested men, Nasser Oday, said outside the courthouse in Jerusalem after the hearing.

In a statement, the police said the shops were searched on Sunday for books suspected of containing “inciting content.” It said detectives “encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes, including a children’s coloring book titled ‘From the Jordan to the Sea.’”

The slogan “from the river to the sea” has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually interpreted by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 10, 1953 — John Shirley, 72.

Did you know that John Shirley has written an historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp — Wyatt in Wichita? I wonder how many of our sff writers beside him and Emma Bull (whose novel Territory was decidedly not historical) have written novels on this incident and the individuals there? 

I really enjoyed his third novel City Come A-Walkin which I think is a brilliant rendering of a City come to life. 

I’ll admit I’m not much at all for grim dystopian SF but I did find his A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona fascinating if in a horrifying manner.

His best known script work is The Crow film, for which he was the initial writer, before David Schow reworked the script. I’m not sure he got actually any credit at all. He also wrote scripts for Poltergeist: The Legacy.

I see that to my surprise he wrote an episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.  He also an episode of Batman Beyond, “Sentries of the Last Outpost” which was about hard core players of a virtual reality role-playing game are recruited by the alleged creator of the game for his own purposes.

He wrote novels in the Aliens, Doom, Halo, Predators franchise, Borderlands video gaming, Resident Evil, DC metaverse and the Grimm series. 

Do tell me what else you enjoyed by him. 

John Shirley

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) TRANSITION. Tony Isabella is now Jenny Blake, the news signal boosted by Mark Evanier in “Tony/Jenny” at News From ME.

…You see, that person is still alive. He’s just no longer Tony Isabella…and here’s where I get into what Daffy Duck would call “Pronoun Trouble.” She is now Jenny Blake, having announced today that she has transitioned to what she feels is the proper gender identification for her. I’ve known about this for a while and as far as I’m concerned, the only bad part of this is the Pronoun Trouble it creates….

(9) THE SIMS 25TH ANNIVERSARY. “The Sims Turned Players Into Gods. And Farmers. And Vampires. And Landlords.” in the New York Times (behind a paywall).

Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god.

“I don’t think God would concern himself with taking out the trash and cleaning the toilet,” he quipped while chain-smoking cigarettes. Besides, he’s an atheist.

But what is better shorthand to describe the man who created The Sims? The influential video game allowed players to act like gods themselves, building virtual neighborhoods populated by virtual families who pay virtual bills and complete virtual chores.

Players could improve the lives of their Sims by constructing McMansions filled with plush couches and flat-screen televisions. Or they could become vengeful, directing Sims to light fireworks indoors and paddle to exhaustion in a swimming pool with no exit.

Twenty-five years later, players are continuing to push the boundaries. Sure, there are glitzy houses and happy families in The Sims 4. But by modifying the game’s code, players have created a health care system as byzantine as the real American one and taught Sims how to wield pistols and knives. The game’s official expansion packs offer their own weirdness. Sims can become vampires and witches. They can even play The Sims.

“I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic,” Wright, 65, said. “I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed.”

The Sims was a sandbox for the American dream when it was released on Feb. 4, 2000, with Wright pulling inspiration from biology, architecture, comics and psychology to dictate the rules of his virtual dollhouse. It was an unusual proposal at a time when most games were goal-oriented and linear, and a predecessor to create-your-own-adventure games like Minecraft that give players a pick axe and carte blanche.

Although more than 500 million people have played games in the Sims franchise, which is particularly popular with women, it was originally seen as a risk. Executives at the game studio Maxis had urged Wright to focus instead on the SimCity franchise, his urban-planning simulator from 1989 that had put the company at the forefront of American game design. “Everyone in the room hated the idea of The Sims,” Wright recalled.

The outlook initially worsened after Electronic Arts acquired Maxis in 1997. Some managers wanted the game to be less realistic; others wanted to prevent it from being released at all.

But other leaders saw promise in Wright’s vision. “We wanted to make SimCity bigger,” said Luc Barthelet, who was then an Electronic Arts executive and brought in key resources for The Sims’s development team. “But we also needed to invest in designers like Will who were extremely talented and doing things that were different.”…

(10) VISIT FROM THE SUCK FAIRY? However, the Guardian’s Bex April May cries “Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember”.

… I forgot how much time the original Sims actually spend working. They do boring, dull jobs for little pay, out of your sight – making the simple message that you get when they are promoted (or passed over) strangely impactful. Put that meagre wage packet towards the cheapest oven on offer, and it’ll probably catch fire and kill you. This is a game that punishes you for being poor. It means that the rich, like the iconic Goth family, in their still-stunning graveyard-edged stone mansion stay, rich – while the poor stay poor. Social mobility in The Sims 1, I learned, is near impossible.

And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you’re on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There’s simply no time to make friends, something I didn’t remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood’s messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically ‘Play in bed,’ thanks to the Livin’ it Up expansion pack that provided the world’s most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There’s nothing dark about that expansion’s heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life….

(11) DOES IT PAY TO BE NICE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] That Hideous Strength (1945) by C. S. Lewis has had the first of two episodes of a documentary on BBC Radio 4. (You can access the documentary here.)

This novel came out before the Narnia books that so far have sold over 100 million copies. That Hideous Strength is that last in Lewis’s so-called space trilogy. Set in a somewhat dystopic, increasingly totalitarian, post-war Britain, it sees a woman’s dreaming enabling her to travel. But shadowy government agencies are in the mix but another nation appears to have a frightening programme of their own and apparently there is something hideous, alien, evil even, in the mix…

We’re not in Narnia anymore. It’s the late 1940s and an exhausted Britain is trying to recover from the war. The establishment of NICE (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) seems to offer a positive future. There are confident predictions of a cure for cancer and new treatments for antisocial behaviour that will made prisons redundant. A tech revolution is blooming without restraint and NICE are secretly experimenting with the creation of trans-human beings of superior intellect. C S Lewis’s ‘modern fairy tale for grown-ups’ warns of a world where technocrats are kings.

Part one of a BBC Radio audio drama version of the story can be heard here: “CS Lewis: That Hideous Strength”.

(12) BITE ME. According to NPR, “Scientists grew human-like teeth in pigs. Here’s how and why”. So you won’t have to get dentures, but you will never be able to eat bacon ever again.

But researchers may be on track to developing a way to grow new, living teeth replacements. In a paper published in late December, a team at Tufts University reported having successfully grown human-like teeth in pigs.

Pamela Yelick, a professor at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and lead researcher of the effort, said pigs have as many as five or six sets of teeth that grow throughout their lives.

If scientists can understand how pigs regrow and replace teeth so many times, Yelick said, they might be able to regrow teeth in people.

In their research, Yelick and her team took soft living tissue from both human and pig teeth, combined them in a lab, and then transplanted it into a mini pig’s mouth. They obtained the materials from pig jawbones and human teeth extracted for orthodontic reasons.

“In a few months, you can get a pretty good sized bioengineered tooth,” Yelick said, noting that while it’s “not perfect” in shape or size, the end product does closely resemble a natural tooth….

(13) ANCIENT ANIMAL MONSTER BURROWS.  [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Did giant ice age beasts carve these vast caves in South America?” asks Nature.  Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.

 For generations, these structures have puzzled travellers and scientists, who have debated how they formed. Explorers in the early twentieth century attributed the spaces to ancient Indigenous groups. But research in the past decade has coalesced around the theory that the caves were carved by extinct megafauna.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Dann, Kevin Lighton, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day, none other than lunar real estate salesman Daniel Dern. This is at least his fifth. But stick around — someday it will be his second fifth.]

Pixel Scroll 2/9/25 The Universal Pixelgraph

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(1) SPACE UNICORNS SOUND OFF. You have until February 17 to make your voice heard in the Uncanny Magazine 2024 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll. Vote at the link. Each person gets a single entry of 3 stories (which can be edited later).

Here is the link to Uncanny Magazine’s 2024 eligible works – there’s still time to read up!

(2) SFF SHUT OUT OF DGA AWARDS. No works of genre interest won when the Directors Guild of America announced the 2025 DGA Awards at a ceremony on February 8. The complete list of 2025 DGA Awards winners and all related credits are at the link.

(3) SPECPO DEFINED. Pixie Bruner, SFPA’s 2025 Rhysling Awards chair, helps readers understand in “Speculative Poetry Defined”.

… We speculative poets know speculative poetry when we read it, but sometimes it’s not so easy to tell for some readers, and sometimes the line is fragile, even for us speculative poets, so I am going to give a few examples of situations and poems that are clearly speculative as guidelines….

… Let’s say a person wants to write a speculative poem about their broken heart. Your feelings are real and having your heart broken is a devastating experience.

However, if your heart has been pulled into cosmic taffy, boiled in acid in a dutch oven full of tears, shattered once it reaches the hard crack stage on a candy thermometer, and fed to the monsters that live under your bed after it has been ripped from your chest, pulped under foot, and destroyed- your tears became diamonds you pawned to a constantly changing man with a ragged trench coat with pockets full of wonders in an alleyway behind a coffeehouse that could only be found at 3:13pm every other Tuesday for a new heart of pure gold or some strange unbreakable alloy with strange properties that you merely insert into a fairy door in your chest- it is now a speculative poem about a broken heart….

(4) FURRIES SLURRED IN TABLOID. Dogpatch Press drew attention to a UK tabloid “hit piece” about a furry convention this weekend in Scotland — “Gathering featuring anthropomorphic erotica will be held in support of Scottish conservation group” at The Telegraph [Archive.Today link] – and says, “Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don’t support.” [Warning for slurs in the screencaps.]

Furries are angry about being conflated with abusers, based on nothing but twisting the wording of a convention code of conduct about what they don't support.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.077Z

It's complicated when surface level reaction is one thing, internal organizer level handling is another. There is the issue of limited power and liability about being able to control who interacts. And then there is the issue of cronyism/corruption which I have witnessed and experienced.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.078Z

I can't discuss active investigation but can help anyone who blows a whistle in public or private. There's multi layers where misinformed, hateful outsider attacks exist at the same time as significant internal issues that are not unique to a targeted community that hosts marginalized people.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) 2025-02-06T22:57:56.079Z

(5) IN CONTRAST. Alternatively, the BBC’s coverage about Scotiacon 2025 is positive: “’Being a furry is like wearing a superhero cape’”.

Fennick Firefox, a man dressed as a large furry orange fox with blue hair and a tail tipped by a flame, says that in his normal life he is very shy person.

But after he adopts his “fursona”, he is dancing in the street and sharing a long hug with his best friend Rock, who is dressed as a giant red and black German Shepherd.

“It’s like a superhero cape,” says Fennick.

“When I put my fox head on, the person is gone – he does not exist.”

Fennick says that being in costume allows him to escape his everyday struggles and “do nothing but be happy”.

That’s what has brought him to Scotland’s largest furry convention – Scotiacon….

(6) HOW FANTASTIC ARE THEY? Erin Underwood’s trailer review tells “How Marvel Finally Got Me Excited About Fantastic Four!”

Marvel’s latest ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ trailer has just dropped, and it’s turning heads! Join me as I dive into this retro-futuristic take on Marvel’s first family. Could this be the MCU’s boldest move yet or another blunder? Watch to find out and let me know what you think!

(7) REEVE REMEMBERED. “6 Former Superman Actors Pay Tribute to Late Legend Christopher Reeve at MegaCon: ‘It Was Always Gonna Be Like Chris’” from People.

Christopher Reeve just got a tribute that even the strongest kryptonite couldn’t take down.

During a panel at MegaCon Orlando in Florida on Saturday, Feb. 8, six actors who have portrayed Superman in the years since Reeve’s role as the Man of Steel in 1978’s Superman came together to discuss the DC hero’s legacy on and off the screen and to honor Reeve, who died in 2004.

Those in attendance included Tyler Hoechlin (Superman & Lois), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Dean Cain (Lois & Clark), Tim Daly (Superman: The Animated Series), George Newbern (Justice League animated series) and Tom Welling (Smallville).

During the discussion, Welling, 47, recalled working with Reeve on a season 2 episode of Smallville, an experience he said he “walked away from wanting to be a better person.” Reeve appeared in the WB series as scientist Virgil Swann, who played an important role in the storyline of Welling’s portrayal of Clark Kent.

“We got there and the plan was to shoot four hours and get his side of two scenes and then he would leave and I would do my side with someone else,” Welling recalled. “We did the first scene and they said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do the next scene.’ He goes, ‘What about Tom?’ “

As Welling recalled at MegaCon, Reeve had other plans — just as he had a quick sense of humor.

“He was like, ‘No I’m not leaving.’ And long story short, it got to the point about eight hours into the day and they turned around filming my scenes with him. And his nurse, power of attorney, was like, ‘If you don’t come with me in 15 minutes, I’m calling the police.’ He had to leave. He looked at me and goes, ‘They’re always telling me what to do.’ “

“You didn’t feel sorry for him at all,” Welling said elsewhere during his story about Reeve. “He was telling jokes the whole time. We had a riot, he was cracking up. … We just had really great banter. I had a lot of fun with him.”…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 9, 1966 — Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots”

Fifty-nine years ago this evening, the thrilling sight of Lost In Space’s “War Of The Robots” first happened. In one corner of this fight, we have Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.  And in the other corner of the ring (metaphorically speaking), we have B-9 from Lost in Space. 

Aired as the twentieth episode of the first season, the story is that while returning from a fishing trip, Will and B-9 find a deactivated Robotoid. Against the wishes of B-9, Will proceeds to repair and restore the Robotoid which apparently becomes a humble servant of the Robinson family. Sure.

The best part of this episode is the slow motion rock ‘em, sock ‘em battle between the robots. And yes it’s a very, very silly battle indeed as you can see from the image below. Robotic gunfighters, eh? 

Lost in Space is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) AI ART GOING UNDER THE HAMMER. But are they hitting it hard enough? Christie’s auction house thinks people should line up to bid on stuff created with AI tools, or might once they explain it to them in “What Is AI Art?”

Christie’s New York is proud to announce its inaugural AI art auction, Augmented Intelligence, the first ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major auction house. Running from 20 February to 5 March with a concurrent exhibition at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the online sale will include highly sought-after works by AI artists spanning the establishment and new guard, such as Refik Anadol, Claire Silver, Sasha Stiles, Pindar Van Arman, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Harold Cohen and more. The sale also showcases a selection of artists from NVIDIA’s AI Art Gallery.

‘AI technology is undoubtedly the future, and its connection to creativity will become increasingly important,’ says Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Director of Digital Art.

So, what is AI art?

In simple terms, artificial intelligence art (AI art) is any form of art that has been created or enhanced with AI tools. Many artists use the term ‘collaboration’ when describing their process with AI….

(11) PEEK-A-BOO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I wonder what Stanislaw Lem would make of this? “Alien ocean could hide signs of life from spacecraft” – posted by University of Reading.

Searching for life in alien oceans may be more difficult than scientists previously thought, even when we can sample these extraterrestrial waters directly. 

A new study focusing on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that sprays its ocean water into space through cracks in its icy surface, shows that the physics of alien oceans could prevent evidence of deep-sea life from reaching places where we can detect it. 

Published today (Thursday, 6 February 2025) in Communications Earth & Environment, the study shows how Enceladus’s ocean forms distinct layers that dramatically slow the movement of material from the ocean floor to the surface. 

Chemical traces, microbes, and organic material – telltale signatures of life that scientists look for – could break down or transform as they travel through the ocean’s distinct layers. These biological signatures might become unrecognisable by the time they reach the surface where spacecraft can sample them, even if life thrives in the deep ocean below. 

Flynn Ames, lead author at the University of Reading, said: “Imagine trying to detect life at the depths of Earth’s oceans by only sampling water from the surface. That’s the challenge we face with Enceladus, except we’re also dealing with an ocean whose physics we do not fully understand.  

“We’ve found that Enceladus’ ocean should behave like oil and water in a jar, with layers that resist vertical mixing. These natural barriers could trap particles and chemical traces of life in the depths below for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, it was thought that these things could make their way efficiently to the ocean top within several months. 

“As the search for life continues, future space missions will need to be extra careful when sampling Enceladus’s surface waters.” …

Primary research at Nature.

(12) THUNDERBOLTS*. Deadline introduces “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Thunderbolts*’”.

In the Super Bowl trailer for Thunderbolts*, premiering May 2 in theaters, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine warns the Avengers aren’t coming as she questions “who will keep the American people safe?”

Set to Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, the spot features Florence Pugh’s Yelena Bolova/Black Widow suffering from some serious imposter syndrome until her fellow Thunderbolts give her a pep talk.

“We can’t do this. No one here is a hero,” she says before David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian tells her: “Yelena, when I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”…

(13) DRAGON REBOOT. Deadline also covered “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘How To Train Your Dragon’”, for the live-action version coming to theaters including Imax screens on June 13.

Return with us now to the rugged isle of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been bitter enemies for generations, Hiccup (Mason Thames) stands apart. The inventive yet overlooked son of Chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his voice role from the animated franchise), he defies centuries of tradition when he befriends Toothless, a feared Night Fury dragon. Their unlikely bond reveals the true nature of dragons, challenging the very foundations of Viking society.

With the fierce and ambitious Astrid (Nico Parker) and the village’s quirky blacksmith Gobber (Nick Frost) by his side, Hiccup confronts a world torn by fear and misunderstanding. As an ancient threat emerges, endangering both Vikings and dragons, Hiccup’s friendship with Toothless becomes the key to forging a new future….

(14) THE FISH (OR WHATEVER THEY ARE) ARE BITING. “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’” at Deadline.

This summer’s action-packed monster movie Jurassic World: Rebirth has released its first trailer and glimpse into the latest film in the franchise, starring Jonathan Bailey, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali among others. Universal opens the film globally on July 2.

The fourth film in the Jurassic World series follows a team of scientists and others whose main objective is to acquire genetic samples from three of the largest dinosaurs in the sea, on land and in the air. Set five years after Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), the planet has become inhospitable for dinosaurs, so those that still exist have become isolated to environments in which their breeds once flourished. The three most colossal creatures in the different parts of the ecosystem could prove necessary for a life-saving drug for humans….

(15) IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Next Deadline cues up “Super Bowl Trailer: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’”.

…Ethan Hunt, the spy at the center of the blockbuster action flick helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, returns to chase down villains, conduct submarine reconnaissance and hang beneath propeller planes in what is billed as the epic finale to a saga that first began nearly two decades prior.

In the sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One, slated for release May 23, Cruise’s character embarks on a final mission that will reportedly close out the sprawling franchise….

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

Pixel Scroll 2/1/25 Cleanup On Isle of the Dead Five

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(1) BSFA AWARDS LONGLIST. The British Science Fiction Association today put out the longlist for the BSFA Awards (see “Second Round of 2024 BSFA Awards Nominations Begins”.)

Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford’s “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” is a nominee in the Best Short Non-Fiction category.

(2) CLARKEWORLD’S BEST. Neil Clarke has released “Clarkesworld 2024 Reader’s Poll Finalists”. The public has until February 15 to vote on the winners at Surveymonkey.

(3) LOCUS RECOMMENDED READING LIST. The 2024 Locus Recommended Reading List has been posted by Locus Online.

Voting has opened in the Locus Awards Poll. The deadline to vote is April 15.

(4) JET CRASH IN NORTHEAST PHILADELPHIA LAST EVENING. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] CNN: “Medevac jet crashes in northeast Philadelphia neighborhood”.

Northeast Airport lies on Grant Avenue in Philadelphia. I live on Grant Avenue, some five minutes from the site of the departure of a Lear Jet medical transport plane that took off at a few minutes past six last evening with a little girl being transported home following life-saving surgery.

I was enroute to my girlfriend Shelly’s home to go out to dinner at Tiffany’s Restaurant on the Boulevard. I had considered taking Roosevelt Boulevard North down to Oxford Circle, as it may have been a faster trip but, at the last second, decided to follow Bustleton Avenue down to Castor, instead.

I arrived at Shelly’s house at a few moments past six. We drove down Levick Street to the boulevard, and turned left into the middle lanes to continue our journey. Within seconds we were dodging police vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances trying desperately to reach Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard amidst screaming sirens where, thirty seconds after takeoff, the Lear Medical Jet had crashed into Cottman Avenue near the boulevard, across from the Roosevelt Mall where I had grown up.

Traffic was being re-routed from virtually every direction, and I found it difficult to keep from being hit by other oncoming busses and trucks while attempting to crossover onto nearby side streets. As I passed Cottman Avenue on the boulevard, I turned to my left and saw flashing lights, emergency vehicles, and bright flames bursting into the rainy night sky.

Had I decided to travel down Roosevelt Boulevard on my way to the Oxford Circle, as I had originally planned, I might have traveled past the outside lanes of Roosevelt Boulevard, at the corner of Cottman Avenue going South, just at the moment of impact of the small jet into the congested community adjoining the fatal crash.

It took us over an hour to finally reach our dinner destination on a trip that normally might have taken fifteen or twenty minutes. We didn’t know just what had occurred mere inches from our travels North on the boulevard until we reached Tiffany’s, and were told by the staff that a plane had fatally crashed into our tightknit community. We were shaken, but glad to be alive.

Our hearts go out to our neighbors in our surrounding community, and to the families of those who perished in this terrible, nightmarish tragedy. May God Rest Their Sweet Souls.

(5) BLACK HISTORY MONTH. Axios begins Black History Month by recounting “What Octavia Butler saw on Feb. 1, 2025, three decades ago”.

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler wrote in her 1993 novel “Parable of the Sower” that Feb. 1, 2025, would be a time of fires, violence, racism, addiction, climate change, social inequality and an authoritarian “President Donner.”

  • That day is today.

The big picture: This Black History Month, which begins this year on a day of Butler’s dystopian vision, Axios will examine what the next 25 years may hold for Black Americans based on the progress in the first quarter of this century.

  • Through her fiction, Butler foresaw U.S. society’s direction and the potential for civil societies to collapse thanks to the weight of economic disparities and climate change — with blueprints for hope.
  • Afrofuturist writers today interpret Butler’s work as metaphorical warnings that appear to be coming true and a call to action….
Octavia Butler

(6) A CITY ON MARS REVIEW. [Item by Kyra.] Published in 2023.

A City On Mars, by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith

Nonfiction/Related

Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism? The Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary.

This is a clear-eyed look at the current barriers to settling space, including technological, physiological, sociological, and legal issues. This may be a must-read for anyone interested in the subject; it’s not the deepest possible examination (it is a pop-science book, after all), but it’s probably one of the broadest.

(7) GET READY FOR WASTED WEEKEND. Booktube luminary Criminolly has been hosting an event called Garbaugust, including the reading of some trashy books in August. Last year he added a mini-event, Wasted Weekend. It’s coming up again on February 15-16. Grammaticus Books wants viewers to pick their book: “I Need YOU to VOTE FOR….” But I don’t know – these are not names I associated with the word “trashy” —

Vote for your favorite trashy novel for this year’s Wasted Weekend. A reading event created by CriminOlly. Choose from a diverse selection of books by authors such as Samuel R. Delany, L. Sprague DeCamp, Terrence Dicks, Frederick Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth and of course…Lin Carter the King of Trash!

(8) JOHN ERWIN: CORA BUHLERT’S FAVORITE HE-MAN. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] John Erwin [who died December 20] was my He-Man.  For most Germans, their He-Man is either Norbert Langer, who voiced him in the long-running German audio drama series, or Sasha Hehn or Heiko Liebig, who voiced him in the German dub of the Filmation He-Man and She-Ra cartoons. 

But even though I first heard He-Man speak in the Filmation cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I didn’t watch the German dub, but the English version via Sky Channel, when my Dad worked in the Netherlands in the 1980s. And in that cartoon, the voice of He-Man and his alter ego Prince Adam was none other than John Erwin.

If you rewatch the iconic opening narration of the cartoon – where John Erwin explains the entire premise of the series in one minute and ten seconds – you’ll notice the subtle difference between Prince Adam’s more youthful tones (Adam turned nineteen in the course of the series, while John Erwin was 47, when he first voiced him) and He-Man’s booming heroic voice.

However, John Erwin didn’t just voice He-Man and Prince Adam, but as was common with Filmation, he voiced multiple other characters in the He-Man and She-Ra cartoons as well, showcasing his amazing range. And so John Erwin lent his voice to Skeletor’s henchmen Beast-Man, Whiplash and Webstor. He was the delightfully dim-witted heroic warrior Ram-Man and the wise but grumpy dragon Granamyr as well as many one-of guest characters.

Beyond He-Man, John Erwin appeared in the western series Rawhide alongside Clint Eastwood, one of his comparatively few parts in front of the camera, and voiced Reggie in various Archie cartoons over the years. He was also the voice of Morris the Cat in the commercials for 9-Lives cat food. And if you ever needed proof that dragons are related to cats, just compare the snarky Morris to the equally snarky Granamyr.

Voice actors are unseen and often unsung. This is unfair, because their talent is what brings cartoon characters to life and turns them into icons. John Erwin’s voice played a big part in turning the Filmation He-Man cartoon into the runaway success that it was and in turning He-Man into the iconic hero he became.      

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

February 1, 1954 — Bill Mumy, 71.

By Paul Weimer: Bill Mumy’s intersection with my genre show watching boils down to three properties, and they are the three ones that you think they are.  I first saw him as the mutant overpowered psychic child Anthony in one of the most terrifying Twilight Zone episodes of all time, “It’s a Good Life”. What happens when a young boy develops psychic powers and takes control of the town. Nothing good…I mean, no wait, Anthony, I mean, it’s a good life. I swear, it’s a good life.  The whole idea that he cuts off the town from the rest of the universe is terrifying in and of itself, isn’t it? You can’t escape him, you can’t escape his power.   Mumy also appears in a few other Twilight Zone episodes in various roles, but they are nothing compared to the power and centrality of his performance in “It’s a Good Life”

His role as Will Robinson in Lost in Space couldn’t be any different. I stumbled across episodes of Lost in Space in reruns not long after seeing the Twilight Zone episode. As the naive, but well-meaning youngest child of the Robinson family, Will Robinson couldn’t be any different than the psychic Anthony. Whether with Robbie, or Dr. Smith (and it seemed he spent more time with either of them than the rest of his family), he showed the childlike wonder of being on alien planets.  I was delighted he had a small role in the recent remake of Lost in Space, too, as the “real” Zachary Smith. (He gets his identity stolen by Parker Posey’s character). That was a neat bit of turnaround, and not at all stunt casting. 

The other genre work I associate Mumy with is, of course, Babylon 5, and Lennier. As the assistant to Delenn, he stands with Vir (Stephen Furst) as one of the two maintained underlings in the diplomatic corps. While Vir feels like an everyman (as the Centauri as, outwardly very much human), Lennier could show, on occasion, through Mumy’s acting, just how alien and not-human the Minbari were. He was meek, mild and deferential…until he needed not to be, and then could be all too inhumanly dangerous and determined. And given that this story is ultimately a tragedy, Lennier’s story is one that hits me in the feels, from start to finish. Such great acting. I remember when watching “Midnight on the Firing Line” and seeing his name in the credits and wondering what the child actor had become. He had become a fine adult actor, that’s what. 

Happy birthday!

Bill Mumy

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) THE TEST OF TIME. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog analyzes the Best Dramatic Hugo finalists of 1984 as part of their continuing series: “Big Worldcon Is Watching (Hugo Cinema 1984)”.

L.A. Con II, the 42nd Worldcon, was the largest World Science Fiction Convention of all time up to that point, with more than 8,000 fans in attendance (to this day, only the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, China has eclipsed that number). Science fiction cinema was bigger than ever. The Hugo Awards were bigger than ever. But in 1984, the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation was still considered a second-tier award.

“We will now proceed with the minor awards: Best Dramatic Presentation,” Toastmaster Robert Bloch quipped as he introduced the nominees: Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes, special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm, early hacking movie Wargames, blockbuster Return of the Jedi, and Oscar Best Picture contender The Right Stuff.

It’s an uneven shortlist that reveals both a tension between the populism and the insularity to which the award was often prone….

(12) STAND BY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD. “OpenAI Strikes Deal With US Government to Use Its AI for Nuclear Weapon Security” – Futurism knows why this sounds familiar.

Remember the plot to the 1984 sci-fi blockbuster “The Terminator”?

“There was a nuclear war,” a character explains. “Defense network computers. New… powerful… hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.”

It seems like either the execs at OpenAI have never seen it or they’re working overtime to make that premise a reality.

Don’t believe us? OpenAI has announced that the US National Laboratories will use its deeply flawed AI models to help with a “comprehensive program in nuclear security.”

As CNBC reports, up to 15,000 scientists working at the institutions will get access to OpenAI’s latest o1 series of AI models — the ones that Chinese startup DeepSeek embarrassed on the world stage earlier this month.

According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who announced the partnership at an event in Washington, DC, the tech will be “focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide,” as quoted by CNBC.

If any alarm bells are ringing by this point, you’re not alone. We’ve seen plenty of instances of OpenAI’s AI models leaking sensitive user data and hallucinating false claims with abandon….

(13) THIEVES LIKE US. Meanwhile, OpenAI apparently can’t keep its own work secure, earning a very loud raspberry from Guardian columnist Marina Hyde: “Oh, I’m sorry, tech bros – did DeepSeek copy your work? I can hardly imagine your distress”.

I once saw an episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals where a man called the cops to report his car stolen, only for it to turn out he’d stolen it from someone else in the first place. I couldn’t help thinking of him this week while watching OpenAI’s Sam Altman wet his pants about the fact that a Chinese hedge fund might have made unauthorised use of his own chatbot models, including ChatGPT, to train its new little side project. This is the cheaper, more open, extremely share-price-slashing DeepSeek.

As news of DeepSeek played havoc with the tech stock market, OpenAI pressed its hanky to its nose and released a statement: “We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more,” this ran….

…So, to put it another way … wait, Sam – you’re not telling us that the Chinese hedge fund crawled all over your IP without asking and took it for themselves? Oh my God, IMAGINE?! You must feel used and abused. Financially violated. Like all your years of creativity were just grist to some other bastard’s mill. Like a host organism. Like a schmuck. Like Earth’s most screamingly preposterous hypocrite….

(14) SUPERHAMLET. From Christopher Reeve’s appearance on The Muppet Show long ago: “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff  over at Media Death Cult considers the sense of place as a principal character in some SF/F… “When Location is the Main Character”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/31/25 I Will Not Be Pixeled, Scrolled Or Filed

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(1) GAIMAN CLICKBAIT. I clicked, so you don’t have to. Despite the Variety headline – “Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Canceled at Netflix After Season 2, Allegations” – the showrunner says Season 2 was intended to be the series’ last, and it’s apparently still going to air, so what about that is a “cancellation”?

Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s “The Sandman” will end with its upcoming second season.

“The Sandman” Season 2 has been a long time coming. The first season debuted in August 2022, and it wasn’t renewed at Netflix until November of that year. At that time, Netflix was also hesitant to label it as a second season at all, choosing instead to say it was “a continuation of ‘The Sandman’ world,” and wouldn’t commit to an episode count. Variety has confirmed the second season was intended to be the last prior to filming.

“‘The Sandman’ series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” “The Sandman” showrunner Allan Heinberg said in a statement to Variety Friday. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”…

(2) COURTHOUSE KRYPTONITE. “Warner Bros. Sued Over International Superman Rights” – The Hollywood Reporter briefs the case.

Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued over the rights to Superman in a lawsuit seeking to block the release of the studio’s tentpole film in several countries ahead of its July debut.

The estate of Joseph Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, alleges that WBD lost its international rights to the character and story years ago but continued to exploit them without its permission or compensation. In a complaint filed in New York federal court on Friday, it seeks a share of profits from all works attributable to the alleged copyright infringement — including Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Black Adam and Shazam! — in key countries such as Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The legal action marks a potential hitch in WBD’s rollout of Superman, which arrives July 11 as the first solo movie for the character in more than a decade since Man of Steel. …

DC’s ownership of Superman dates back to 1938, when writer Jerome Siegal and Shuster, a graphic artist, sold their rights to the character and story for $130. The hero’s first appearance under DC’s banner was in Action Comics No. 1, which detailed his backstory, secret identity as newspaper reporter Clark Kent, and powers of super strength and speed (his first time flying came in 1943 in Action Comics No. 65).

Since then, it’s frequently been the target of litigation, starting in 1947 when the duo sued to invalidate DC’s ownership of the rights to Superman. The case settled, with a $94,000 payout to Shuster and Siegel to resolve the case.

Under U.S. copyright law, Shuster would typically be able to reclaim his domestic rights to Superman under a provision in intellectual property law that allows authors to claw back ownership of their works after a certain period of time. But his sister and brother reached a deal with DC in 1992 that terminated that right in exchange for $25,000 per year. A federal appeals court later upheld that determination.

This time, Shuster’s estate looks to take advantage of U.K. copyright law, which automatically terminates copyright assignments 25 years after an author’s death. By its thinking, it reclaimed the rights to Superman in 2017 since the graphic artist died in 1992.

Also at play: the possibility that Shuster’s sister didn’t have the authority to bind the estate to the agreement that purportedly surrendered its right to terminate DC’s ownership of Superman. In that case, the court stated that the issue is a “complex one” and punted on deciding it.

The lawsuit claims infringement of copyright laws in the U.K. Australia, Canada and Ireland….

(3) SCUTTLEBUTT. “Disney’s Star Wars hotel jumps from deep space to office space” – The Verge explains what that means.

Disney’s extraordinarily expensive Star Wars hotel isn’t coming back. The building that housed the Galactic Starcruiser is being converted into office space, scuppering hopes that it could be reborn or repurposed into a new interactive attraction.

The Wrap reports that the hotel will be converted into an office for Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for its theme parks, retail, and cruise ships. The team located there will reportedly work on upcoming expansions for Florida’s Walt Disney World resort, including a Latin American section of the Animal Kingdom and a Monsters Inc. area within Hollywood Studios.

Galactic Starcruiser was an immersive hotel experience set in the Star Wars universe, where the minimum stay cost $4,800 for two people over two nights. It opened in March 2022 but ran for just a year and a half, shutting in September 2023. It returned to headlines in May 2024 when YouTuber and theme park superfan Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video on its “spectacular failure” went viral, amassing 11 million views…

(4) IT’S PEOPLE! Inverse reviews Companion: “The Wildest Sci-Fi Thriller Of The Year Flips The Killer Robot Movie On Its Head”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a killer robot. Except Companion isn’t exactly the typical take on the classic sci-fi horror story. Instead, Drew Hancock’s cleverly constructed sci-fi horror movie is a fun takedown of the AI cautionary tale we know so well. And in the process, it may have given us the most sneakily feminist social horror movie this side of Gone Girl….

…The reason it all works, aside from Hancock’s admirably deft script, is because of Sophie Thatcher’s wonderfully malleable performance as Iris. Right off the bat, we sense that something is off with Iris — she’s a little too demure, a little too smiley, a little too doe-eyed. However, Thatcher seeds in tiny human quirks that spark some recognition for us: the way her mouth twitches uncomfortably when Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) treats her with contempt, the way she glances down sadly when Josh brushes her off, and, of course, the way she would do anything to survive. By the time Companion drops its robot reveal (which again, happens very early on), we’re already primed to root for Iris, even as she starts to accumulate quite the body count….

(5) AFROFUTURIST SHORT FICTION. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories edited by andré m. carrington will be released in bookstores on February 4, and is available immediately from Library of America.

Inspired by Afrofuturist pioneers like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, a new generation of Black writers is fashioning a renaissance in speculative fiction. Edited and introduced by SF expert andré m. carrington, The Black Fantastic brings together Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Tiptree/Otherwise, and World Fantasy Award winners with emerging voices to showcase this watershed moment in American literature.

Here are twenty beguiling, unsettling, and visionary stories spanning the cosmos and a dazzling array of alternate timelines. Phenderson Djèlí Clark and Alaya Dawn Johnson stare down the specters of history in their haunting fictions, set, respectively, on a Founding Father’s brutal plantation and in the vampire-built internment camps of a dystopian Hawai‘i. Violet Allen’s would-be superhero stories turn to searing metafiction when her main character is repeatedly shot and killed by the police. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Rion Amilcar Scott explore otherworldly forces at play in a small-town barbershop and in a young writer’s ambitions, while Victor LaValle tells the story of a man living on the streets of New York City, his bag of deposit bottles and cans bearing urgent messages from another dimension.

Other stories are by turns comic, provocative, and terrifying: Thaddeus Howze delivers a crowd-pleasing tall tale about a battle with aliens over the fate of Earth, by way of an epic baseball game; Maurice Broaddus spins a coming-of-age fantasy about an American girl in a utopian future Africa; Craig Laurance Gidney offers a Lovecraftian tour of the ballroom drag scene; Tara Campbell weaves a spell of ecofeminist horror; and much more.

Reimagining the past and laying claim to the future, these writers are bringing forth kaleidoscopic new visions of Black identity and creative freedom.

(6) POWER COUPLE. At One Geek’s Mind, John Grayshaw puts a spotlight on Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett with the help of a Luna Monthly interview from 1975: “Interview about Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett”. (The well-known sff writers wed in the 1940s; Ray Bradbury was Hamilton’s best man.) The interview touches on many different fandoms: classic movies, Star Wars, sff books, and comic books. As well as what it was like for female writers in the Forties. 

Wesley Grubb: Edmond Hamilton is one of those bridge-authors, who began writing before the “Golden Age” and continued to write into the “New Wave” era. How well did his writing develop, and how well did his stories mature, from his early career compared to his later career in the 50s and 60s? 

In a 1975 interview with Luna Monthly, Hamilton talked about how quickly he was writing stories back in the pulp era. He said:

“How do I feel about the rapid, high-production way we oldtime pulp writers employed in our work? I can’t speak for others, but for me it was the best way in the world to work. I might have been a more polished writer had I worked in more leisurely fashion, but I might too have been the centipede who didn’t know which leg to lift first.

One of the most ghastly stories I ever wrote was “Outside the Universe,” a wild tale of three galaxies at war. I wrote that in 1928, over 50,000 words of it first draft. I used a very small portable typewriter on a big, flat-top inherited desk. In writing those hectic space-battles, my hard pounding made the little typewriter creep all over the desk, and I would stand up and follow it in my burning enthusiasm.”

(7) THEY CAME FROM MILES AROUND. “Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years” – the New York Times covers a personal appearance by the author, with quotes and comments by several of the fans on hand. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

….When Yarros became a fixture on the best-seller list, with the release of “Fourth Wing,” she had already published around 20 contemporary romance novels. But sales from book to book were largely stagnant, and she struggled with a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder.

Her illness, though debilitating at times, inspired her to write “Fourth Wing,” she said. Yarros grew up loving fantasy, but had never read a fantastical novel with a protagonist who had physical limitations like she did. She decided to write about a young woman named Violet, who enrolls in an elite military academy for dragon riders, and is determined to succeed despite a chronic illness that makes her weak and physically frail….

…Fans’ fervor was palpable at the event, which was held in a huge auditorium in St. Paul. Many in the crowd were dressed up in sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats that said “Basgiath War College,” the military academy of the series. Some were fully decked out in costume, dressed as Violet, in leather body armor, or as dragons….

…At the start of the event, Yarros was introduced by the romance writer Abby Jimenez, who noted that the Empyrean series had taken over the top three slots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Yarros uttered an expletive to express her surprise and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said to the crowd. “You guys did that.”

(8) GRUMPY BUT NOT DOPEY. The star of this event is rather less thrilled to be there than the celeb in the previous item. “Grumpy Harrison Ford, a mystery asterisk and AI gone wild: everything from Disney’s new slate presentation” in the Guardian.

There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.

Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video….

…The assembled audience is also treated to an exclusive clip of the new film, out 14 February, in which we already know Ford will end up transforming into the Red Hulk. It’s an action-packed set piece in which Wilson (Anthony Mackie) infiltrates an enemy base, and showcases the new winged Captain America suit, which we’re told was given to Sam by those helpful Wakandans. . Marvel has always been a franchise built on increasingly wobbly physics, but even the most generous audience might struggle to believe that a bloke with no serum and no billionaire gadgets could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy whose brain is so large it requires its own postcode….

(9) JOHN ERWIN (1936-2025). “John Erwin Dead: ‘He-Man,’ ‘Archie’ Voice Actor Was 88” – The Hollywood Reporter summarizes his career —

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

…For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-85 and on She-Ra: Princess of Power from 1985-87. He also played the villain Beast Man and other secondary characters on the syndicated shows that were based on a line of Mattel toys….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal

Fifty-nine years at Tricon where Isaac Asimov was Toastmaster, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal won the Hugo for Best Novel in a tie with Frank Herbert’s Dune. 

It was first published as “…And Call Me Conrad” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October and November 1965, then as This Immortal in 1966 by Ace Books, and in 1967 by UK publisher Hart-Davis in hardcover. 

So it was only in the magazine that it had that title? So why the name change? Marketing having one of their not so genius ideas? 

Algis Budrys in Galaxy Bookshelf was fond of this novel saying it was “an extremely interesting and undeniably important book” with “a story of adventures and perils that is utterly charming and optimistic.”

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES ANOTHER PAPER ON AI. “New Government Report Addresses ‘Copyrightability’ of AI Works” – Publishers Weekly gives a quick rundown. (Download the full report here.) 

The U.S. Copyright Office has released the second installment of what is envisioned as a three-part report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The most recent release addresses the issue of “copyrightability of outputs generated by AI systems.” Its recommendations are based on the comments the Copyright Office received after it posted a Notice of Inquiry in August 2023 seeking public input on the full range of copyright issues raised by AI.

Based on an analysis of copyright law and policy and comments from the public, the Copyright Office made the following conclusions and recommendations:

  • Questions of copyrightability and AI can be resolved pursuant to existing law, without the need for legislative change.
  • The use of AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect the availability of copyright protection for the output
  • Copyright protects the original expression in a work created by a human author, even if the work also includes AI-generated material
  • Copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements
  • Whether human contributions to AI-generated outputs are sufficient to constitute authorship must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis
  • Based on the functioning of current generally available technology, prompts do not alone provide sufficient control
  • Human authors are entitled to copyright in their works of authorship that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs, as well as the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs
  • The case has not been made for additional copyright or sui generis protection for AI generated content

(13) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to “Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama” in Episode 246 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

I’ve known writer/editor/artist Larry Hama for at least half a century now, but his career started long before that, when he sold his first cartoon to Castle of Frankenstein magazine in 1966. He’s probably best known as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro toy line, writing nearly every issue of the book’s 13-year run.

Larry Hama

He’s also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He worked as an editor at both DC and Marvel, and at the latter edited the humor magazine Crazy, as well as Conan, The ‘Nam, and Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham. He co-created the character Bucky O’Hare, who not only appeared in comic books, but as a television cartoon. Last year, he was inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.

We discussed how cataract surgery changes the way an artist perceives the page, what really happened at a mid-’70s penthouse comic book party, Bernie Krigstein’s anger at being asked questions about comics, why Wally Wood felt it was so important for his assistants to learn how to letter, what it was like being part of the famed Crusty Bunkers inking collective, why getting to edit Crazy was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,  which Marvel Comics Bullpenner was the visual inspiration for Obnoxio the Clown, why getting his freelancers to hit their deadlines was never a hassle, the editing advice Archie Goodwin gave him early on, the real reason he needed to create that famous silent issue of G. I. Joe, the differing zeitgeists of Marvel vs. DC during the ’70s, his approach to taking over the editing of legacy characters, our joint confusion over memes of previous generations, and much more.

(14) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT? “Asteroid 2024 YR4 Could Strike Earth, Researchers Say, But the Odds are Small” in the New York Times (bypasses paywall).

You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic.

Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the most up-to-date information, that there is a 1.3 percent chance that this asteroid will strike somewhere on Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Should this keep you up at night?

“No, absolutely not,” said David Rankin, a comet and asteroid spotter at the University of Arizona.

The object’s current odds of striking Earth may sound scary — and it’s fair to say that an asteroid in this size range has the potential to cause harm. Should it strike a city, the damage would not cause anything close to a mass extinction, but the damage to the city itself would be catastrophic.

But a 1.3 percent chance of a hit is also a 98.7 percent chance of a miss. “It’s not a number you want to ignore, but it’s not a number you need to lose sleep over,” Mr. Rankin said….

(15) A LONG WAY FROM THE BEACH. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The roads must roll. Or the sand must flow, anyway. Meet the Dune Express, the second-longest conveyor belt in the world. At 42 miles in length, it’s built to take the place of trucks in moving sand from a quarry to an oil field where it’s used in fracking.

The Dune Express is the Texas-sized, if risky, baby of Atlas Energy Solutions. And, yes, the company is named after that book. “The World’s Second-Longest Conveyor Belt Comes to West Texas” in Texas Monthly.

I rapped my knuckles on the galvanized aluminum exterior to make sure it wasn’t some sort of desert mirage. It was solid: $400 million worth of concrete, electronics, and steel assembled to rotate a thick rubber belt along roughly 66,000 metal rollers. Something on the order of 13 million tons of sand can be carried the entire length of the machine—42 miles—each year. If all of that were used to build sandcastles, you could have a couple of dozen the size of Buckingham Palace, with more than enough left over for a Taj Mahal.

But this sand isn’t for beachside amusement. It’s for fracking. When drillers crack open subterranean rock in the Permian Basin to allow oil to flow out, sand rides alongside the injected fluid to prevent the spider’s web of new fractures from closing up again. Each grain of sand functions like a tiny support beam in a minuscule mine shaft. Fracking a single well can consume more than four hundred truckloads of sand…

(16) ELIXIR OF YOUTH. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] They say change is good, but I am totally with Sheldon Cooper in that it rarely is… And now we have under-reported news that could really shake things up for the planet…!

One of science’s greatest successes/failures is that the technology it spawns has benefited humanity so well that our global population has soared from a billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 to 8 billion in 2024!  The resulting pollution, the loss of wildlife habitat to agriculture, is disrupting the Earth system…  And if that was not bad enough, now comes news that we may soon have a drug that can significantly (by a decade) extend human life spans….!

Yes, you read that correctly: ‘life extension’!  Our planet’s population could soar? Inequality could increase? 

The news was reported in this week’s issue of Nature. It seems that injecting old mice with an RNA molecule seems to reverse some signs of ageing – helping them to live longer, regrow hair and maintain their physical and mental abilities.

They used mice aged between 20 and 25 months, which is akin to between about 60 and 70 in human years. They went on to live for about 4.5 months longer, on average. They regrew hair that had become sparse, maintained a higher body weight, could stay balanced on a rotating rod for longer and had better grip strength for their weight

Now, don’t get too excited/worried just yet as the mouse may not be a good model for humans when it comes to RNA treatment, however this is still something of a breakthrough…

Primary research here.   

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

Pixel Scroll 12/30/24 Look My Friend, I Happen To Know This Is The Pixel Express

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(1) DOCTOR WHO ACTOR ON HONOURS LIST. The King’s New Year Honours 2025 list includes several major figures of genre interest:

The Order of the Companions of Honour

Ishiguro won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature, and many of his works have fantastic elements.

Knights Bachelor

  • Stephen John Fry, President, Mind and Vice-President, Fauna & Flora International. For services to Mental Health Awareness, the Environment and to Charity.

His varied acting career includes such productions of genre interest as TV’s Blackadder and the films V for Vendetta and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

Member of the Order of the British Empire

  • Thomas Stewart BAKER, Actor and Writer. For services to Television

He played the Fourth Doctor in the Doctor Who series.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Stephen Fry. Photo by Elena Ternovaja.
Tom Baker

(2) F IS FOR FAKE. Silvia Moreno-Garcia today sent this warning to her newsletter readers:

I was going to try to show a newspaper for proof of life, but who gets newspapers these days? Anyway, it’s December 30, 2024 and there has been a scammer going around Facebook pretending to be me and trying to join writer groups. So this is a reminder:

1. All my official social media channels are listed via my website. 
2. I do not direct message people, nor do I read or respond to direct messages.
3. I do not conduct business via social media or without my agent.
4. I do not offer personal advice via social media. 

Don’t accept any messages from suspicious accounts! Stay safe!

(3) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Cora Buhlert has revealed the winner (?) of “The 2024 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents”.

…I’m thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2024 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents is…

Drumroll

Fire Lord Ozai

As voiced by Mark Hamill in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and played by Daniel Dae Kim in the eponymous live action series, Fire Lord Ozai is the supreme ruler of the Fire Nation and a genocidal tyrant. His grandfather already wiped out the Air Nomads, while his father Fire Lord Azulon set his sights on the Earth Kingdom and Northern and Southern Water Tribes. Fire Lord Ozai, meanwhile, continues his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and tries to conquer or wipe out all other nations. He succeeds, too, and – granted near unlimited power by a passing comet – crowns himself the Phoenix King, ruler of his entire world.

After another Fire Lord accepts on his behalf –

…Scattered applause can be heard around the auditorium from those audience members who accepted the award on behalf of their parents. Hans Beimer is about to boo again, but Luke Skywalker, who’s sitting in the front row in full Jedi robes, uses a mild Force choke on him, just enough to shut him up.

At the bar in the back, Tyrion Lannister, who’s already quite drunk, calls out, “Well spoken, lad. You tell ’em, kid.”

(4) WEIRD AND WILD SCIENCE. Ian Tregillis has revealed that the “Wild Cards” universe is the basis of forthcoming article co-credited with George R.R. Martin. As he told readers of the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society newsletter:

…My last several blog posts for the Wild Cards website documented the step-by-step development of silly, yet increasingly sophisticated mathematical models for distilling the fundamental premise of Wild Cards into a concise, self-consistent physics framework. (Laying aside the unanswerable question of how any virus, extraterrestrial or otherwise, could imbue people with a panoply of physics-abusing powers.)

The work eventually reached a level where instead of writing another stupid blog post, it was worth attempting to turn the whole thing into a serious physics research article. I pitched this notion to George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass back in March.

“Ergodic Lagrangian Dynamics in a Superhero Universe”, by I. L. Tregillis & George R. R. Martin, will appear in the American Journal of Physics in early 2025.

Tregillis has previously used these thoughts to put together a whimsical (math-light, meme-heavy) hour-long presentation that takes a lay-audience through the development of this model, from first principles to the final result. To date he’s presented “The Math (& Physics) of Wild Cards” to the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society (November, 2023) and at Bubonicon 55 (August, 2024).

(5) IN PIECES. This is pretty ridiculous. The new Superman trailer redone in Lego: “Official Superman Teaser Trailer – in LEGO”.

(6) ON DISPLAY IN LA. Lauren Salerno tells readers of The Mary Sue “Science fiction has always been a space for queer expression”.

…Star Wars may be playing catch-up on representation, but science fiction fandom has been a safe space for queer expression since its modern beginnings. At the USC Fisher Museum of Art, an exhibition titled “Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation” explores queer history in sci-fi, starting from the 1930s through to the 1960s. Art, literature, and other ephemera have been carefully curated by ONE Archives, the largest repository of LGBTQ+ materials in the world. According to Alexis Bard Johnson, the Curator at the ONE Archives and USC Libraries, the starting point for the exhibition came from noticing the sheer volume of science fiction material in the archive. Many of the items on display come from the collections of Lisa Ben and Jim Kepner. Both were queer activists who were heavily into sci-fi fandom and members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.

It’s important to note that there are two ways of looking at the word queer. One way is a person of one gender who has attraction and desire for someone of the same gender. Another definition of queer is someone who exists outside of the mainstream. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, people with queer identities could inhabit both of those definitions. In this way, it became a space to fit in a little more comfortably when it was not very safe to be out.

The other factor that made sci-fi fandom a haven at the time was the proliferation of fanzines. Lisa Ben and Jim Kepner learned how to produce fanzines during their time in the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. The club even had printing machinery for members to use. Lisa Ben published the first lesbian publication in the U.S., Vice Versa. Jim Kepner had his own zine called Toward Tomorrow. Having a means of production for outsider ideas along with the community built through a love for science fiction was an incredibly powerful way for queer people to find each other….

(7) IN MEMORY YET GREEN. Gizmodo has posted a genre-based in memoriam list: “Honoring the Inspiring Sci-Fi, Horror, and Fantasy Luminaries Lost in 2024”.

In io9’s annual “in memoriam” post, we pay tribute to actors, directors, artists, composers, writers, creators, and other icons in the realms of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy that have passed. Their inspiring work has impacted the lives of so many and will live on through their legacies in the worlds of genre entertainment….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

One Million B.C. (Raquel Welch version)

By Paul Weimer: Or, WPIX strikes again.

I’ve mentioned WPIX, an independent station in NYC (channel 11) was responsible for me first seeing this movie¹. It was around when I was first watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, so it was around 1980 or so.

The movie is sheer nonsense. I had cause to rewatch it a couple of years ago, randomly during the height of the pandemic (big mood) when I tried to, and failed, to work from home due to technological limitations.  I wanted to have something mindless on. And of all the things I could have picked, I delved into my youth and went with One Million B.C.  I wound up watching more of the movie than I intended, as my laptop and my internet connection glacially struggled and my work production was minimal. (I would soon go back to the office, and in an office of 120 people, be one of ten in the building for weeks on end.) 

So while I remembered a lot about this movie (and not just Raquel Welch in the famous fur bikini), there was a lot that I didn’t remember so much and got to see on the refresher.  I remembered there was a big climatic battle between the two factions, for example, but the volcano erupting in the middle of it in a deus ex volcana was not something I had actively recalled. But the Triceratops fight against the small meat-eating dinosaur? I think that made a big impression on me back in the day and is why the trike is in my top three dinosaurs. 

And sure, humans and dinosaurs never co-existed together, ever. But I do wonder if Stirling’s The Sky People, which is set in a universe with a habitable Venus and Mars wasn’t inspired by this film. While his Mars is all ancient civilizations, his Venus is jungles…with dinosaurs…and, cavemen (and beautiful cave women, too as it so “coincidentally” happens). 

Fun fact: Apparently there is an earlier 1940 version in black and white. No fur bikinis in that one. Not only because of the mores of the 1940’s…but bikinis themselves had not yet been invented yet! I’ve never seen it. I wonder if any Filer has?

Anyway, the remake is mindless fun, still. 

¹ The luxury of pre-cable TV in New York was in retrospect incredible:  CBS (2), NBC (4) ABC (7). Independent stations on 5 (later, Fox) 9 (later the CW), and WPIX 11 the biggest of the independents (later WB). 13 was PBS, and then there were other PBS stations including 21, and 50 (50 showing the Doctor Who “movies” I’ve mentioned before). So the Independents really could specialize and WPIX specialized in movies. They called themselves “New York’s Movie Station” and meant it.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) D&D UPDATE BRINGS CONFLICT. The New York Times explores how “D&D Rule Changes Involving Race and Identity Divide Players”. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

While solving quests in Dungeons & Dragons, the gamers who role-play as elves, orcs and halflings rely on the abilities and personalities of their custom-made characters, whose innate charisma and strength are as crucial to success as the rolls of 20-sided dice.

That is why the game’s first significant rule changes in a decade, which became official this fall as it celebrated its 50th anniversary, reverberated through the Dungeons & Dragons community and beyond. They prompted praise and disdain at game tables everywhere, along with YouTube harangues and irritated social media posts from Elon Musk.

“Races” are now “species.” Some character traits have been divorced from biological identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by definition. And Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed a trend throughout role-playing games in which players are empowered to halt the proceedings if they ever feel uncomfortable.

“What they’re trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling,” said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master.

The changes have exposed a rift among Dungeons & Dragons players, a group as passionate as its pursuit is esoteric, becoming part of the broader cultural debate about how to balance principles like inclusivity and accessibility with history and tradition.

Robert J. Kuntz, an award-winning game designer who frequently collaborated with Gary Gygax, a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, said he disliked Wizards of the Coast’s efforts to legislate from above rather than provide room for dungeon masters — the game’s ringleaders and referees — to tailor their individual campaigns.

“It’s an unnecessary thing,” he said. “It attempts to play into something that I’m not sure is even worthy of addressing, as if the word ‘race’ is bad.”…

(11) BY GEORGE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ryan George took Christmas week off, so to speak, but strung together his 10 favorite episodes from 2024 in a one-hour Pitch Meeting compilation. “Pitch Meeting: Ryan George’s Picks For 2024”.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside the “Kraven the Hunter Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 12/22/24 Ding Dong, The Pixel’s Read

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(1) IS THIS MISSING, OR JUST HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT? Ross Douthat tells New York Times readers “We Need a Great American Fantasy” (link bypasses the paywall.)

Any cultural critic can complain, as I did in last weekend’s column, about the lack of creativity in American popular culture right now and the unmet “hunger for a certain kind of popular art” amid so much institutionalized unoriginality. It’s a bit harder to give writers or filmmakers specific marching orders. What exact kind of popular art are we missing? What specific achievement should American creators be aiming for?…

…If I were giving out assignments for would-be invigorators of our stuck culture, I would suggest new experiments in the national fantastic and a quest for the Great American Fantasy story….

… Just as political thinkers like Louis Hartz have argued that America lacks a true conservative tradition, being a liberal nation from the get-go, someone could argue that the Great American Fantasy is actually an impossibility, since the fantasy genre is concerned with the transition from the premodern to the modern, the enchanted to the disenchanted, and America has been disenchanted and commercial and capitalist from Day 1….

… Greer commends the musical “Hadestown” (which I have not seen) for trying to work in this terrain, and there are plenty of other examples of attempts at the American fantastic. I mentioned “Wicked” earlier because L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is probably the most enduringly influential work of American subcreation, but a longer list would encompass pulp magazines and “Weird Tales” and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “John Carter of Mars” books and then work its way forward to Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series, Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” (an Englishman writing American fantasy) and, of course, Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” saga, with special nods to H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury for working in zones where fantasy blurs into horror or science fiction. (You could also argue that space opera, from “Flash Gordon” to “Star Wars,” is actually the key American contribution to the fantasy genre, but that would take a separate essay to unpack; you could argue that superheroes are the American form of fantasy, but you’d be wrong.)…

(2) PAY THE WRITER. The Hollywood Reporter learns “WGA Members Prohibited From Working With Village Roadshow For Now”.

The Writers Guild of America has prohibited its members from working with Village Roadshow for the time being after the company refused to pay numerous writers.

“It has come to the Guild’s attention that over the last few months, Village Roadshow hasn’t paid writers on numerous projects,” the WGAW wrote in a statement on Saturday. “Village Roadshow owes writers compensation, interest and benefit contributions but has refused to pay. As such, the Guild has determined that Village Roadshow is not reliable or financially responsible and requires the posting of a bond to protect writers. Village Roadshow has, to date, refused to do so.”

As a result, the company is on the guild’s strike list until further notice.

“It is crucial that Village Roadshow be prevented from undercutting writers’ standards and conditions,” the statement continued. “Village Roadshow cannot be allowed to benefit from writing services provided by WGA members.”…

(3) ORC REAPPRAISAL. Robin Anne Reid links to “Orcs are People!” at Writing from Ithilien.

A list of sources that show how readers’ perceptions of Orcs have changed over time: first, from The Silmarillion Writers Guild: Orcs are People! The SWG does a fantastic job not only of archiving fanworks (all media), but inspiring them (through prompts and challenges), and curating Themed Collections (which are always acknowledged to be incomplete and request that readers provide additional items to add to the collection.

This collection by Curathol shows how some fans have challenged the all too common stereotypes of Orcs as “instruments of evil,” a view that Tolkien’s own writing challenges:

“Whatever Tolkien’s final thoughts, his works depict Orcs with an undeniable humanity—they sing songs, chafe against Big Bosses, and even seek vengeance for deaths of family or comrades. Whether by intent or no, they were people beyond being mere pawns driven by a Dark Lord’s will.

“Though within Tolkien’s world ‘Evil cannot create,’ it would do to remember that Morgoth was not wholly evil in his beginning. If they exist beyond Morgoth’s will, then by some measure they must also be Children of Eru. Even Finrod argued against the power of Morgoth to so wholly alter The One’s design. While the deepest philosophical questions of Orcs may remain unanswered by the Professor, his fans may, if not restore a lost humanity, firmly bestow one upon them….”

(4) SUPER TEASER. “’Superman Trailer’ Earns 250 Mil Views: Biggest in Warner Bros History” reports Variety. But Deadpool and Wolverine holds the overall record.

The live-action introduction to the new DC Universe got off to a massive start, according to James Gunn. The filmmaker announced on his social media platforms Friday that the “Superman” teaser trailer was viewed over 250 million times in its first day.

“Krypto really did take us home: With over 250 million views and a million social posts, ‘Superman’ is officially the most viewed and the most talked about trailer in the history of both DC and Warner Bros,” Gunn wrote. “This is because of all of you: thank you! We’re incredibly grateful and, most of all, excited to share this movie with you in July. Happy Holidays!”

According to Gunn, the Superman teaser views blew many of this year’s studio tentpoles out of the water. The first “Joker: Folie à Deux” trailer launched with 167 million views in its first 24 hours, for instance, while “Inside Out 2,” the highest-grossing movie of the year with $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office, launched its trailer to 157 million views. Marvel’s “Deadpool and Wolverine” trailer still holds the record for biggest trailer launch of all time with 365 million views….

(5) YULE BE GLAD YOU DID. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s TV ‘Watcher’ previews this year’s traditional ghost story for Christmas from the BBC: “A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone – far too good to only exist as festive TV”.

Heavens! Oh, it’s you, Doctor Blathery: forgive me, you gave me an awful fright. You see it’s the queerest thing: this little stone statue I inherited with the cottage when I moved to this sleepy village from London (where everybody hates me because I’m from London), well, it seems to me … Oh, you shall call me half-mad! It seems to be moving around from room to room when I’m not looking. I swear it to you: last night, while I was reading by the fire and holding a handkerchief – which I do every night because it’s Victorian times and they haven’t invented telly yet – it was over on the dressing table, and now … why, it’s on the dining room chair! Doctor, you look shaken. Take a seat, I shall fetch you some brandy. Doctor: what happened to the charming young couple who lived here afore me all those years ago? You … you knew her, didn’t you?

Sorry, sorry. I slip into “Victorian voice” a lot at Christmas. Christmas, as you know, is the best time of the year – Coke adverts! Quality Street! One binbag for the recyclable wrapping paper and another, much plumper bag for the glossy stuff! – but it’s also a weirdly spooky one, and is arguably a better time to consume a ghost story than Halloween is. Thankfully. the BBC knows this, and so has been on-and-off commissioning a ghost story to marken the yule – no, I’ve gone Victorian again. Anyway, they started in 1971, did it until 1978, stopped until 2005, have been doing it sporadically since then, and a few years ago someone had the good sense to just hand the whole thing over to Mark Gatiss and go: “Mark, please Gatiss this as hard as you possibly can.” This is his seventh year doing just that.’…

(6) OBAMA’S YEAR’S BEST LIST. “Barack Obama just revealed his 10 favorite books of 2024 and here’s a quick description for all of them” – The Mary Sue has the entire list. Two are sff – Booker winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey, and Clarke Award winner In Ascension by Martin Macinnes.

(7) WHEATON READY FOR THE LAST TIME. “Paramount Reportedly Cancels Wil Wheaton’s ‘Ready Room’ Star Trek Show” says Cord Cutters News.

After a five-year voyage alongside the resurgence of the Star Trek universe, Wil Wheaton’s tenure as host of The Ready Room has come to an end. The Star Trek aftershow, which premiered alongside Star Trek: Picard in early 2020, seemingly aired its final episode today, coinciding with the finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks. According to a report from Trek Core.

The 16-minute concluding episode focused on the animated series’ final chapter, featuring interviews with series leads Tawny Newsome (Mariner), Jack Quaid (Boimler), Noel Wells (Tendi), and Eugene Cordero (Rutherford). The cast reflected on the finale and the overall legacy of Lower Decks….

(8) AI REPLACING HUMANS IN MUSIC. [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] You get two free articles from Harper’s, and this one is worth using one of those. I hadn’t realized things were this far advanced. I feel like I should have guessed: “The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly”. “Spotify’s plot against musicians.”

…Before the year [2017] was out, the music writer David Turner had used analytics data to illustrate how Spotify’s “Ambient Chill” playlist had largely been wiped of well-known artists like Brian Eno, Bibio, and Jon Hopkins, whose music was replaced by tracks from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers a subscription-based library of production music—the kind of stock material often used in the background of advertisements, TV programs, and assorted video content.

For years, I referred to the names that would pop up on these playlists simply as “mystery viral artists.” Such artists often had millions of streams on Spotify and pride of place on the company’s own mood-themed playlists, which were compiled by a team of in-house curators. And they often had Spotify’s verified-artist badge. But they were clearly fake. Their “labels” were frequently listed as stock-music companies like Epidemic, and their profiles included generic, possibly AI-generated imagery, often with no artist biographies or links to websites. Google searches came up empty….

… Then, in 2022, an investigation by the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter revived the allegations. By comparing streaming data against documents retrieved from the Swedish copyright collection society STIM, the newspaper revealed that around twenty songwriters were behind the work of more than five hundred “artists,” and that thousands of their tracks were on Spotify and had been streamed millions of times.

Around this time, I decided to dig into the story of Spotify’s ghost artists in earnest, and the following summer, I made a visit to the DN offices in Sweden. The paper’s technology editor, Linus Larsson, showed me the Spotify page of an artist called Ekfat. Since 2019, a handful of tracks had been released under this moniker, mostly via the stock-music company Firefly Entertainment, and appeared on official Spotify playlists like “Lo-Fi House” and “Chill Instrumental Beats.” One of the tracks had more than three million streams; at the time of this writing, the number has surpassed four million. Larsson was amused by the elaborate artist bio, which he read aloud. It described Ekfat as a classically trained Icelandic beat maker who graduated from the “Reykjavik music conservatory,” joined the “legendary Smekkleysa Lo-Fi Rockers crew” in 2017, and released music only on limited-edition cassettes until 2019. “Completely made up,” Larsson said. “This is probably the most absurd example, because they really tried to make him into the coolest music producer that you can find.”

Besides the journalists at DN, no one in Sweden wanted to talk about the fake artists….

(9) GEORGE ZEBROWSKI (1945-2024). Writer and editor George Zebrowski died December 20. His partner, Pamela Sargent, wrote on Facebook:

“On December 20, 2024, George Zebrowski, my beloved companion of almost sixty years, died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 78. George had been ailing for a while. On the day before his death, I visited him for the last time at the nursing home where he had been since late August, never imagining that it would be for the last time. Right now I have no more words.”

His first three published sff stories appeared in 1970, two co-authored with Jack Dann. His first published novel, Omega Point, came out in 1972. His book Brutal Orbits won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1999.

Three of his short stories, “Heathen God,” “The Eichmann Variations,” and “Wound the Wind,” were Nebula Award nominees. 

He and Pamela Sargent produced three books in the Star Trek:TOS universe, and two books in the Star Trek:TNG universe.

His work as an anthology editor included three volumes of SFWA’s Nebula Awards series, and five volumes of Synergy: New Science Fiction.

He served on the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award jury from 2005-2013.

He was a past editor of the SFWA Bulletin. Zebrowski and Pamela Sargent jointly won the Service to SFWA Award in 2000.

(10) JENNIFER STEVENSON’S STAY HOME EGG NOG FLUFF. [Item by Jennifer Stevenson.] This eggnog was introduced to my Irish friends in a modest way, sort of, I know we’re only Yanks and so we’re amateur drinkers at best, and here you are trapped in Ohio for the holidays, so why not enjoy an American tradition? This was me, setting them up for the one-two punch. Here was punch number one:

1 fifth high-quality dark rum

1 fifth high-quality bourbon
1 dozen eggs, separated
1 to 2 quarts whipping cream
1 lb powdered sugar
Nugmeg, cinnamon, star anise, and allspice to taste

Beat the sugar into the egg yolks. Add the alcohol slowly, then add the spices and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate at least an hour to “cure.” Two to five hours isn’t a bad thing.

When you’re half an hour from serving, pour the nog into a giant serving bowl.

Beat the whipping cream to stiff peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the nog.

Beat the egg whites until they’re stiff and fluffy. Fold them into the whipped cream + nog.

Serve in small cups and offer spoons. Garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg.

You sort of eat this nog, rather than drink it. Stir it throughout your party to keep the nog mixed with the fluffy stuff.

If you have leftovers, i.e., if your friends are not hardened drunks who aren’t used to sticky Starbucks beverages, you can use the leftover nog (beaten well) as the egg+milk+sugar portion of a crepe recipe to feed any survivors in the morning.

We did this for our Irish friends, who got us up at an unconscionable hour on New Year’s Day to attend Mass. Seriously? So I gave them the hair of the dog, in the form of highly alcoholic crepes wrapped around hunks of ham. Worked pretty well.

[Reprinted from the archives of Sleeping Hedgehog. Jennifer Stevenson’s Trash Home Sex was shortlisted for the Locus First Fantasy Novel Award and longlisted for the Nebula two years running. Try her romantic fantasy series Hinky Chicago, which is up to five novels, her paranormal romances Slacker Demons, which are about retired deities who find work as incubi, or her paranormal women’s fiction series Coed Demon Sluts, about women solving life’s ordinary problems by becoming succubi. She has published more than 20 short stories.]

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) ‘TIS SOME SEASON. CBR.com nominates its candidates for “The Best The Far Side Holiday Comics”.

…Some of the best Far Side holiday strips reflected Gary Larson’s poignant and irreverent attitudes toward the traditions surrounding the holidays….

The list begins with Thanksgiving.

10. A Blacksmith Puts Olives on His Fingers During the First Thanksgiving

Comedian Zach Mander said in a viral TikTok that Jerry Seinfeld’s observational humor wouldn’t work today because anyone can quickly Google the answer to his questions, causing the joke to fall apart. The opposite can sometimes be true for the absurdist humor of The Far Side. While explaining a joke can often make it less funny, if what’s being described is background information you didn’t have or forgot about, Googling something after reading a Far Side comic strip can make it funnier on the second reading.

That said, sometimes a Far Side gag is exactly what it seems, and no Googling is needed, like in this Thanksgiving strip. There’s no hidden meaning behind blacksmith Thomas Sullivan putting five olives on the tips of his fingers. It’s a silly act that jokesters do in everyday life. It stands to reason that someone might’ve done it during a historical event that’s looked upon with reverence centuries later. While this is one of the better Far Side holiday strips, it’s lower tier among the best. Several other strips are sharper in their commentary and more amusing in their imagery.

(13) WOULD YOU LIKE THE GOOD NEWS OR THE BAD NEWS FIRST? “Ukraine’s All-Robot Assault Force Just Won Its First Battle” — Forbes has the story.

A Ukrainian national guard brigade just orchestrated an all-robot combined-arms operation, mixing crawling and flying drones for an assault on Russian positions in Kharkiv Oblast in northern Ukraine.

“We are talking about dozens of units of robotic and unmanned equipment simultaneously on a small section of the front,” a spokesperson for the 13th National Guard Brigade explained.

It was an impressive technological feat—and a worrying sign of weakness on the part of overstretched Ukrainian forces. Unmanned ground vehicles in particular suffer profound limitations, and still can’t fully replace human infantry.

That the 13th National Guard Brigade even needed to replace all of the human beings in a ground assault speaks to how few people the brigade has compared to the Russian units it’s fighting. The 13th National Guard Brigade defends a five-mile stretch of the front line around the town of Hlyboke, just south of the Ukraine-Russia border. It’s holding back a force of no fewer than four Russian regiments.

That’s no more than 2,000 Ukrainians versus 6,000 or so Russians. The manpower ratio is roughly the same all along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 34-month wider war on Ukraine. Russian troops still greatly outnumber Ukrainian troops, despite the Russians suffering around twice as many casualties as the Ukrainians since February 2022….

… In what amounted to a smaller-scale proof of concept for the recent combined-arms robot assault, a Ukrainian ground robot cleared a Russian trench in Kursk Oblast in western Russian back in September. Russia has attempted small-scale ground ’bot assaults of its own, but less successfully.

The problem, of course, is that while robots are adept at surveilling and attacking, they’re terrible at holding. To hold ground, armies put infantry in trenches. They sit, watch, wait and call for reinforcements when the enemy attacks. It’s tedious, taxing duty that requires constant vigilance.

Constant vigilance is difficult when a human operator is remotely observing the battlefield through the sensors of a maintenance-hungry ground robot.

Machines break down. And their radio datalinks are highly susceptible to enemy jamming, as the California think-tank RAND discovered when it gamed out a clash between hypothetical U.S. (“Blue”) and Russian (“Red”) army battalions partially equipped with armed ground drones. “Blue’s ability to operate was degraded significantly by Red’s jammers,” RAND concluded….

(14) CLAIM TO FAME. “The Oldest Xmas Light Display in the WORLD! Live from the real Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena”.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Apparently “Hanging with Doctor Z” is a thing. Here’s an example with the word Christmas in the title, but not in the dialog, which is mainly sexual innuendo. (Yeah, tell me you won’t be able to click on it fast enough…)

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Jennifer Stevenson, John A Arkansawyer, 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 Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 12/20/24 How Much Is That Shoggoth In The Attic? The One With The Horrifying Tale

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(1) ENTERING PUBLIC DOMAIN IN 2025. At John Mark Ockerbloom’s blog Everybody’s Libraries you can use this hashtag to access his #PublicDomainDayCountdown – a series of daily posts through the end of the year highlighting the works falling out of copyright in the U.S. Here are some examples.  

(2) OTHER COVERAGE. Animation Magazine is ready: “Popeye & Tintin Enter the Public Domain in 2025”

Two icons of comics and animation history will be entering the public domain in the U.S. as of January 1, 2025, opening their earliest representations up to be used and repurposed without permission or payment to copyright holders: E.C. Segar’s idiosyncratic sailor-man Popeye and Belgian comics artist Hergé’s globe-trotting reporter Tintin.

The Public Domain Review is also doing a countdown “What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2025?” (They give a hat tip to Ockerbloom’s blog.)

(3) NEVALA-LEE AND MALZBERG DIALOGS. [Item by Alec Nevala-Lee.] I was very sorry to see the post announcing the death of Barry Malzberg, who was an important figure in my life. It inspired me to look back at our voluminous email correspondence, which I’ve decided to put online, on the assumption that other people might find it interesting as well: “Barry N. Malzberg and Alec Nevala-Lee (Emails 2016–2023)”.

In 2016, I reached out to Barry N. Malzberg with a question relating to my book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The result was an intermittent email correspondence that grew over the next six years to an astounding 25,000 words. I’m posting it here because it contains a lot of interesting material, as well as the single greatest compliment that I’ve ever received, which Malzberg emailed to me on February 2, 2017: “It is clear to me that you may be already science fiction’s most promising writer and thinker to emerge since Alfred Bester stumbled into the room almost eight decades ago. Like the Elizabethan theater before Shakespeare, we have been waiting for you without really knowing we were waiting for you.” I don’t believe that this was ever true—certainly not when Malzberg said it to me—but I’ve treasured it ever since. Malzberg, for all his flaws, was an essential figure in my life, and I deeply regret that I’ll never have the chance to speak to him again.

(4) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 125 of the Octothorpe podcast, “I’m Physically Present in This Hotel Room”, is belatedly here!

We read some letters of comment, we discuss the Seattle online Business Meeting plan and also the news from Smofcon 41, and Liz tells us what the objectively correct best Christmas movie is.

Get the transcript here.

John wears an Octothorpe Christmas jumper and a green and red hat with elf ears, Alison wears a red Christmas jumper and a moose/reindeer hat, and Liz wears a blue jumper and a Christmas tree hat. The words “Octothorpe 125” appear at the top in a Christmassy font that looks like it has snow on the letters.

(5) SFF REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle, in “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” for the Guardian, discusses: Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo; How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K Dick; The Woman Who Fell to Earth by RB Russell; and Mystery Lights by Lena Valencia.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

December 20, 1985 — Enemy Mine

By Paul Weimer: First, for me, came the movie. It was 1985, and if you’ve been following my timeline of movie watching, this was when I was finally going to movies on my own. Back to the Future was a big movie I saw that year, but that winter, there was Enemy Mine. 

I had not read the novella that the movie is based on, although I would, later, get an edition that included all of the ancillary material that helped inspire the novella. And, of course, the film. 

This again was 1985 and like Back to the Future, I was delighted to be able to immerse myself in a new property. This was in space but it was not Star Wars or Star Trek, and it was better than a lot of the dreck I had seen on television, mostly. Dawitch and Jerry as played by Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. were compelling and I did see it opening weekend…but it turns out, not many other people did. Despite the performances and the obvious appeal of a Cold War story, the movie financially bombed.  

I blame the poster.  Look at the poster sometime.  I had gone in, looking at that poster, expecting a movie where the two are continually at war, and what I got was something far more interesting, complex and dynamic…two people from two different species who hate each other, but eventually learn to trust, even love one another. The movie’s message is powerful, and its advertising completely ignores it. It does it a disservice (Years later, when seeing John Carter, I would remember it being similarly badly served).  

And thanks to the movie, I still want to go to the Canary Islands, to the volcanic area that the movie is filmed in. It’s a bleak and eyecatching place, and my camera and I would love to capture it and experience the location first-hand. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born December 20, 1960 — Nalo Hopkinson, 64.

By Paul Weimer: There are some authors and their books that shake you completely and utterly out of your comfort zone. Nalo Hopkinson is one of those authors. We cast our minds back to the late 1990s as I was growing in my science fiction reading, moving toward my path of being a reviewer and critic. I had not yet really started to read that widely, but I was learning.  When I saw Brown Girl in the Ring, her debut novel, it looked completely different than anything I had ever read before. So, in the spirit of trying to broaden my reading, I picked it up.

And it knocked me on my arse. Late 21st century Toronto setting. Afro-Caribbean culture? African Mythology and deities mixed in with a believable and immersive dystopian future. This novel hit buttons of mine hard, and buttons that I didn’t know I had. I think that this was one of the first novels that started my quest to start looking for books “Beyond the Great Walls of Europe”, to engage with other traditions, cultures, starting points. It was absolutely superb.  And if you haven’t read it, it’s short and punchy, I devoured it in a couple of days.

Since then, Hopkinson has been a feature in my reading ever since, from Midnight Robber through works like The Salt Roads to more recent works like her recent Blackheart Man. Nalo’s output is not a tsunami of novels and stories; her work is more like the work of Ted Chiang, a few startingly potent and polished gems that are potent and powerful.  She’s not a writer for every cup of tea, that uncompromising nature of her work means that there can be some rather tough subjects and themes in the work. But I think her work is worth it.

Nalo Hopkinson

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) KRYPTO’S VALUE. Brian Cronin’s CBR. Newsletter discussed the origins and role of Krypto – unfortunately, there’s no public link to it. (And it wouldn’t be nice for me to gank the whole article.)

…Like most new characters (including Batman’s answer to the dog trend, Ace the Bathound, who debuted a few months later), Krypto was only intended to be a one-off character, just something that Otto Binder and Curt Swan could introduce to get through another issue of the Superboy feature, but fan response was strong enough that Krypto soon returned, and became a regular fixture in the series. He was then added to the main Superman comic books, as well (althoguh he did not play as major of a role in the stories of Superman as an adult as he did in Superboy stories, there is just something special about a boy and his dog). Krypto was a major part of the Superman titles in the 1960s, as the titles began to introduce more and more characters, like Streaky the Super Cat (she and Krypto had quite the rivalry).

What made Krypto so special to Superman?

The importance of Krypto was made clear by the late, great Martin Pasko in Action Comics #500 (by Pasko, Swan, and Frank Chiaramonte), when Superman is walking with reporters through the Superman Pavilion of the Metropolis World’s Fair, and reflecting on his life. Krypto comes up, and Superman speaks about the loneliness that comes from being the “Last Son of Krypton.” It is not just a matter of being the only survivor from your planet, which, of course, carries along a tremendous amount of survivor’s guilt, but there is also the problem where, because of the way that Earth gives you special powers, that you are alone on THIS planet, too, because you’re different than everyone else. That is, therefore, why Krypto was so important to Superman, because it was someone that Superman could relate to, even if he was “only” a dog…

(10) HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPACE FORCE. “US Space Force 5 years later: What has it accomplished so far, and where does it go from here?” Space tries to supply an answer. Will this bureaucratic growth survive a second Trump administration, despite being founded during the first?

The U.S. Space Force celebrates its fifth anniversary today.

The service was formally established on Dec. 20, 2019, when President Donald Trump signed it into law with the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that allocates U.S. military spending each year. Since then, the U.S. Space Force has grown to nearly 15,000 servicemembers and civilian personnel. In its fifth year, Space Force has overseen astronaut launches from its facility at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and has even seen one of its own active Guardians, as Space Force members are known, launch into space.From GPS navigation networks to weather forecasting, from broadband internet to early-warning missile detection systems, the U.S. (like many other nations) increasingly depends on space-based technologies for its way of life. Space Force’s role in protecting and overseeing these technologies has evolved and grown over the last five years, and will likely continue to do so as it moves forward. But just what has Space Force accomplished in its first five years, and where will it go from here?

… From a piece of legislation to launching its own personnel from its own launch site, Space Force set a brisk pace in its first five years.

The service’s current Chief of Space Operations, Gen. Chance Saltzman, highlighted the rapid growth of Space Force in remarks given at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) “Celebrating the U.S. Space Force and Charting Its Future” event in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 17.

“On average, we have tripled in size every year for the last five years in personnel, an astounding growth rate for any government organization,” Saltzman said. “We have reimagined operations, redefined policies [and] reworked processes from the ground up to forge a service purpose-built for great power competition.

“All of this in just five years.”…

(11) WHO IS NUMBER ONE? A nice way to see out the year! “Booksellers predict Orbital by Samantha Harvey will be UK No 1 bestselling book” reports the Guardian.

This year’s Booker prize winner will be the Christmas No 1 bestseller, predict UK booksellers. 

The Booksellers Association (BA) asked bookshop staff which book they think could reach the festive top spot, and Orbital by Samantha Harvey was the most popular response.

The slim volume was “selling well even before the Booker prize win, and since then it has been flying off the shelves,” said Amanda Truman, who owns Truman Books in Farsley, West Yorkshire.

Fleur Sinclair, president of the BA and owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop in Kent, would be “amazed” if Orbital doesn’t top the charts. Between its Booker win and “accessible paperback format and price, so many of our customers are buying it both for themselves and as gifts”.

Orbital became the first Booker novel to hit No 1on the UK bestseller chart in the week of its win, with 20,040 copies sold that week. The novel follows a day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station.

Aside from the novel “being a literary masterpiece, awards really help sell books”, said Jude Brosnan, marketing manager at Stanfords bookshops. “Along with all the extra promotion they provide, we find customers really appreciate recommendations – even more so at this time of year.”

(12) OSCARS IN TIMES TO COME. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s “Week in Geek” pushes for more recognition for ‘mo-cap’ acting: “Aliens, Gollum and talking raccoons: when will the Oscars finally reward mo-cap acting?”

Picture the future: it’s the Oscars 2034, and the best actor prizes are no longer split into male and female categories. Instead, there is an award for best performer in a live action role, and another for best actor in a performance capture role. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks can finally go head-to-head for their epic turns in Sophie’s Choice II and Even Bigger respectively, while Zoe Saldana and Andy Serkis are up for the latter for their startling performances in Avatar 6 and The Lord of the Rings: What Gollum Did Last Summer.

Some might suggest this is a tantalising vision of a world where the Academy has finally caught up with the realities of modern acting. Others would no doubt point out that the Oscars has been rewarding work where the actor’s real face is obscured by makeup, prosthetics, masks, or other transformations for decades, ever since John Hurt received a best actor nod for The Elephant Man in 1980. The difference is that while Robert Downey Jr somehow managed to snag a nomination for playing an Australian method actor donning blackface in the biting 2008 satirical comedy Tropic Thunder, the likes of Avatar’s Saldana and Lord of the Rings’ Serkis seem doomed to Oscars limbo, as they pour their hearts repeatedly into roles only to watch awards season roll by like an indifferent Na’vi riding a banshee past a crying Jake Sully.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Todd Mason.] Colbert and company love their animation… “’It’s A Worm-derful Life’ – A Late Show Animated Holiday Classic”.

Santa and his workshop are, like America, having a bumpy sleigh ride transitioning to the incoming Trump administration. When Elon Musk is put in charge of Christmas efficiency as part of his D.O.U.C.H.E. program, Santa must either pledge absolute loyalty, or face a gladiator battle of ancient Roman proportions. Will Father Christmas survive? Will Joe Biden stay awake through the entire special? Will RFK Jr.’s brainworms have enough brain meat left to eat this winter? Find out in “It’s A Worm-derful Life,” the new Late Show Holiday Animated Classic!

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Alec Nevala-Lee, John Coxon, Todd Mason, 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 Jeff Jones.]

Pixel Scroll 12/19/24 Credentially Centigrade

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(0) I opened a ticket with Jetpack customer service yesterday after the eighth consecutive post without a subscriber notification. They’re looking into it.

(1) UP, UP AND AWAY. The ‘full length’ Superman Official Teaser Trailer dropped today.

(2) A SUPERBOY AND HIS DOG. Deadline follows up the trailer with: “’Superman’: James Gunn On Superhero’s ‘Complicated’ Relationship With Krypto; ‘He’s Not Nearly The Best Dog’”.

In a moving moment in the trailer, a bloodied Superman who has fallen to a snowy Earth suddenly whistles and out of the blue we see a storm in the distance as Krypto the dog comes to some form of a rescue.

Said Gunn at a presser for the trailer about including the canine in this live-action version of Superman: “I think we’re seeing that from the beginning we’re seeing a little bit of a different side of Superman than what we’ve seen.”

“This movie at the end of the day is not about power. This movie is about a loose term of the word a human being and who he is as a person and virtually struggling in his day-to-day life, and we see a different aspect of him in the beginning.” [says James Gunn]

“His relationship with Krypto is complicated. He’s not nearly the best dog. There’s a lot more to Krypto than you see in this trailer.”…

(3) YOUR FACE BELONGS TO US. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill is BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week.

What if you could be identified by anyone with just a blurry photo..?  Now, we (SF fans) are surely all aware of the Orwellian nightmare of social control and identity.  In Your Face Belongs to Us Kashmir Hill looks at the ClearView AI…  and it’s not really that good…

Today ClearView AI declares that it has a database of 50 billion facial images sourced “from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, and many other open sources.” Your face may well belong to them.

Your Face Belongs To Us was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science book prize 2024 and described by the Financial Times as “A parable for our times”. According to The Economist, “A walk down the street will not quite feel the same again.”

You can download the following episodes: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, and Episode 5. 

(4) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] I started taking notes when the Jeopardy round had a clue about a File 770 favorite:

That’s Weird, $600: Weird Tales magazine published his story “The Black Ferris”, which formed the basis for “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

Challenger Eric Weldon-Schilling was up on his Bradbury.

That’s Weird, $1000: It’s the formal & familial, though maybe not terribly polite way to address the trio of witches in “Macbeth”

After a noticeable pause, challenger Sarah Rosenthal rang in and tried, “What are ‘The Weird Sisters’?” and this was right.

The Jeopardy! round had a category “Poli Sci”. Double Jeopardy had “Poli Sci-Fi”.

There was a little bit of SFF content elsewhere, too.

Victorian Verse, $400: The Victorians loved these supernatural little creatures, often spelled with an “E” in place of an “I”, as in Yeats’ “The Stolen Child”

Eric got it: “What are faeries?”

Poli Sci-Fi, $400: Located somewhere in the Rockies, the capitol of this country dominates its 12 surrounding districts.

Champion Ashley Chan had read her “Hunger Games” and responded, “What is Panem?”

$800: George Lucas said of this “Return of the Jedi” guy, “Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the Senate & finally took over”

Eric knew it: “Who is Emperor Palpatine?”

$1200: Secretary of Education Laura Roslin suddenly ascends to the presidency of the 12 colonies on this series

Eric, perhaps a fan, got this too: “What is ‘Battlestar Galactica’?”

$1600: This “Star Trek” organization, the UFP for short, has a president, a federal council & a supreme court

Eric again: “What is the United Federation of Planets?” And he then went to the last question in the category.

$2000: A prominent member of the Ape National Assembly, this doctor is both Minister of Science & Chief Defender of the Faith

Ashley came in here with “Who is Caesar?” but this cost her $2000.

Sarah and Eric didn’t try it — it was Dr. Zaius.

(5) JUDGE SIGNALS A LOSING CASE. “Florida Court Urges School District To Settle In Book Banning Case” reports Publishers Lunch.

A federal judge in Florida has urged the Escambia County School Board to settle a book-banning case brought by PEN, PRH, and others, mindful that it has cost local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. As of last September, the school board had already spent more than $440,000 on attorneys’ fees. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II wrote in the footnote of a court order that a settlement, “should be particularly important to (the school board) because it is spending taxpayer money to defend this suit and it could end up having to pay all or part of Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees on top of its own attorneys’ fees if Plaintiffs prevail in this case.”

Escambia County banned 1,600 titles from school libraries, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. In December, the parties attempted mediation but came to an impasse after eight hours. Additionally, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that Escambia County school officials have spent almost $200,000 in another lawsuit over the removal of picture book And Tango Makes Three. (Nassau County was also sued over the removal of this book and it was restored to shelves in September.)

Last January, Wetherell wrote, “The Court simply fails to see how any reasonable person would view the contents of the school library (or any library for that matter) as the government’s endorsement of the views expressed in the books on the library’s shelves.”

(6) FORTY WHACKS. Camestros Felapton continues to map out his plan for cashing in on a literary trend in “Dahrk Snarl II: The Romantasy of the Blood-Axe”.

[Simon Goquickly] Dear Mr Snarl, or may I call you Dahrk? So lovely to have you back.
[Snarl] You said you had a job for me.
[Simon Goquickly] I do, I do!
[Snarl] It had better not be one of them barbarianistas that make hot mud drinks. If I wanted to drink hot mud I’d fight the geyser golems of Gahst.
[Simon Goquickly] My, my, you fought the geyser golems of Gahst?
[Snarl] It was a misunderstanding see? I thought they said it was a “geezer” and I thought how hard could it be to fight some regular geezer? Turned out it was a ‘omonid.
[Simon Goquickly] A homonym?
[Snarl] That as well….

(7) BARRY MALZBERG (1939-2024). Author and editor Barry Malzberg died December 19. Following a series of medical problems, of which the last were pneumonia and a bacterial infection, a few days ago he was moved into hospice care. His daughter, Erika, informed friends today: “ My dad passed away this evening, around 4:30pm. My sister had been with him for a few hours and I was just getting back after having visited with my mother. He took his last breath almost the moment I arrived. It was very, very peaceful and we are so grateful.” 

His first science fiction story, “We’re Coming Through the Window”, was published in the August 1967 issue of Galaxy.

Many of his science short stories and novels in the late 1960s were published under the pseudonym “K. M. O’Donnell”.

His novel Beyond Apollo won the inaugural John W. Campbell Memorial Award (1973).

His nonfiction works won two Locus Awards: The Engines of the Night (1983), and Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium (2008).

Malzberg collaborated with Mike Resnick on more than 50 advice columns for the SFWA Bulletin. They have been collected as The Business of Science Fiction.

Barry Malzberg and Edward Ferman. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Julius Schwartz, Barry Malzberg, and Ron Goulart. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

A Clockwork Orange

By Paul Weimer:

…or, Paul gets snakebit by looking at acclaimed films.

I’ve mentioned in earlier columns how I started to in the early to mid 90’s to read SFF books that had been nominated and won awards. I did the same thing for a while with films as well. Although I was not and would not be interested in photography as something for me to do for another decade, in retrospect, my interest in image started earlier, even more subconsciously, than I realized. 

Anyway, I had heard of the brilliance of A Clockwork Orange, and I had been watching a number of 70’s films, and so a trip to the video store (remember those?) meant that it was time for me to engage with Kubrick’s film. I had already seen Dr. Strangelove (I had won a copy in an early online contest) and of course, 2001. So I thought I knew what I was in for when I watched A Clockwork Orange.

Reader, I was not and did not.

Much of the film I was enthralled by. I had not yet read the Burgess book, but the worldbuilding, the dark future of Britain was enthralling. The movie is well acted, even if it is hard to take (poor, poor Alex’s reconditioning).  The score, even if I was and am not a music fan, was memorable (and I bought the soundtrack on CD).  It’s a dark future but an enthralling one. 

But that scene. You know the scene. The imagery. Alex’s break-in, his deadly sexual assault with that gigantic sculpture of a helpless woman. THAT I had not signed up for. That was hard to take. That I had not been warned about. I’ve only watched the movie a few times since, as brilliant as it is…and I skip that scene. Every single time after the second time, where I stopped and froze the cascade of images that we see in the height of the assault.  But I don’t need to see this scene anymore. So it goes.

But I still do use the phrase a “bit of the old ultraviolence” now and again. The movie is unforgettable, and revolutionary. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) LONDON CRITICS’ CIRCLE. [Item by Steven French.] Feminist body-horror movie The Substance is nominated in the London Critics’ Circle awards. “Anora and The Brutalist lead London film critics’ award nominations” – the Guardian has details. It appears this is the only film of genre interest in contention, except for the Technical Achievement category:

Film of the year

  • The Substance

Director of the year

  • Coralie Fargeat – The Substance

Screenwriter of the year

  • Coralie Fargeat – The Substance

Actress of the year

  • Demi Moore – The Substance

Supporting actress of the year

  • Margaret Qualley – The Substance

Technical achievement award

  • The Substance – makeup, Stéphanie Guillon & Pierre-Olivier Persin
  • Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – visual effects, Angus Bickerton

Also worth mentioning is the animated feature category.

Animated feature of the year

  • Flow
  • Inside Out 2
  • Memoir of a Snail
  • Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
  • The Wild Robot

(11) LIKE SANDS THROUGH AN HOURGLASS. Didn’t you predict this? “’Dune: Prophecy’ Getting Season 2” reports Deadline.

HBO‘s Dune: Prophecy will be returning for a second season. The news was announced today during a virtual press conference with showrunner EP Alison Schapker, and stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams.

The prequel series to Legendary’s Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune movies will air its Season 1 finale on Sunday….

(12) WHAT IF AI WAKES UP? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In today’s Christmas Nature: “What should we do if AI becomes conscious? These scientists say it’s time for a plan”.

Look, I keep on telling folk that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens! Indeed, some say we should be concerned for any putative, war-mongering AIs welfare…. 

We all know what happened with the Forbin Project and younger fans will be well aware of issues with Skynet.   Well now someone is calling us to have AI care policies….

Researchers call on technology companies to test their systems for consciousness and create AI welfare policies.

A group of philosophers and computer scientists are arguing that AI welfare should be taken seriously. In a report posted last month on the preprint server at arXiv, ahead of peer review, they call for AI companies not only to assess their systems for evidence of consciousness and the capacity to make autonomous decisions, but also to put in place policies for how to treat the systems if these scenarios become reality.

(13) MOON’S BIRTHDAY QUESTIONED. “You don’t look a day over 4.35 billion! Here’s the moon’s anti-aging secret” – Laist shares a theory.

The Moon has long been the Earth’s close companion, but researchers have struggled to understand exactly when the moon formed, because tiny crystals in the moon rocks brought home by astronauts suggested two different ages.

Now, a study in the journal Nature argues for the earlier age, saying that the ancient Moon also went through a period when it got hot and partially remelted, producing new rocks about 4.35 billion years ago.

The rock-melting heat came from early gravitational interactions with the Earth, which stretched and squeezed the Moon, warming it up.

This process is called “tidal heating.” It is how Jupiter currently heats up its moon Io, the most volcanically active spot in the solar system….

… Nimmo says that lab workers have analyzed moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts and found that almost all of the samples were 4.35 billion years old, suggesting they formed around 200 million years after the solar system started.

The trouble is, he says, simulations of the solar system’s evolution suggest the Moon had to have emerged earlier than that-–because at 200 million years, pretty much all of the material winging around had already been swept up into planets….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, David Goldfarb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Daniel Dern.]