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Pixel Scroll 5/12/25  I Heard It Through The Godstalk

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(1) ARTHUR C. CLARKE SHORTLIST. The Arthur C. Clarke Award 2025 Shortlist was announced today. File 770 lists the six finalists at the link.

(2) HAPPY 90TH! On Wednesday May 14 “Griffith Observatory celebrates 90th birthday” reports LAist. (The official website with more detail about the celebration is here: “Griffith Observatory – Southern California’s gateway to the cosmos!”)

A star was born in 1935, when Griffith Observatory became the first public observatory west of the Mississippi.

Now, “Griffith Observatory is the most visited public observatory on the planet,” says Ed Krupp, longtime director of the observatory.

In the 90 years since its founding, more than 7 million people have peered through the historic Zeiss telescope that adorns the peak of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park.

“More than any other telescope on Earth,” Krupp adds.

Celebrations kick off with a special opening ceremony on the observatory’s front lawn at 11:30 a.m., before doors open at noon. Visitors will receive limited-edition 90th anniversary buttons while supplies last.

Throughout the day, the observatory will host special programming highlighting both astronomical phenomena and the building’s history as a center for public astronomy.

“People on site will get to see how the sky really works,” Krupp said. “It’s a reminder that the observatory itself is an instrument.”

In the evening, a program in the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater will honor California’s Indigenous astronomical traditions. And visitors will gather on the West Terrace to salute the sunset “as the sun salutes Griffith Observatory’s birthday,” Krupp said. “It’s a cosmic party.”

As night falls, the celebration will continue with a rare event: the Southern Major Standstill Moonrise, part of an 18.6-year lunar cycle. The event will also be live-streamed on Instagram.

(3) IT’S BOT TIME. NPR’s TV reviewer says this is what to watch for: “On TV this week: ‘Murderbot’ and a Joan Rivers tribute on NBC”.

Think back to a time about six years ago, before the explosion of streaming services that included Apple TV+, and it’s tough to imagine a TV show like Murderbot getting made.

Not just because its star, dreamboat actor Alexander Skarsgård, might be more focused on big films. But because the eye-popping special effects and high-quality production involved in developing a project from Martha Wells’ ambitious science fiction novel series The Murderbot Diaries might be a stretch even for a major motion picture – let alone a TV series on a platform that struggles to build big hits.

In fact, Murderbot is the latest example of a trend I’ve noticed on streaming TV – exquisitely produced science fiction and fantasy shows that may not be seen outside of a small-yet-passionate fanbase.

Apple TV+’s Murderbot, debuting Friday, has quite a few hallmarks of high-quality TV. Not only is Skarsgård magnificent in playing a cyborg who has secretly become an independent, free thinking artificial being – he’s in a series created and executive produced by Chris and Paul Weitz, brothers who worked on acclaimed films like About a Boy and American Pie….

…It’s an innovative, creative story told in 10 short episodes, satirizing everything from ruthless corporatism to blithely naive social justice stands. And it will be catnip for science fiction fans who love all the actors who pop up in it. But it’s also not likely to get wide viewing, because Apple TV+ has made a habit of spending loads of money on beautifully shot science fiction stories that have a tough time making a wide impact….

(4) PARTING SHOT. The release of the pre-publication version of the third part of the Copyright Office’s report “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence” came the day before — “Copyright Chief Fired Amid AI Debate”. Publishers Weekly reports on the suspicious move.

On Saturday, the Trump administration fired Shira Perlmutter, the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, just two days after the dismissal of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, under whose auspices the U.S. Copyright Office operates. Perlmutter was appointed by Hayden in 2020….

… The move, like Hayden’s dismissal before it, was immediately blasted by Democratic members of Congress. Rep. Joe Morelle (Dem., N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, called the move “a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” adding, “It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

On Friday, Perlmutter’s office released the pre-publication version of the third part of the Copyright Office’s report “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence,” following a first segment released in July 2024 and a second released this January. This third part focuses on the impact of generative AI training across a wide range of topics, from the origins of the technology, to AI companies’ possible infringement in training their data sets, to those companies’ defense that the training counts as fair use, to what potential licensing scenarios might look like.

Morelle and others have speculated that Perlmutter’s dismissal was likely due to her release of the preliminary report. But sources close to the office, who spoke with PW on condition of anonymity, suggest that it is more likely that Perlmutter, having heard of her impending dismissal, ordered the report released beforehand to ensure it entered the public record in spite of its incomplete status. (The report, for instance, lacks some citations.)…

(5) POSTER BOY. “’I add the human touch’: the beautiful, bespoke work of Berlin’s last cinema poster artist” – a Guardian profile.

Götz Valien is Berlin’s last movie poster artist, for more than three decades earning a modest living producing giant hand-painted film adverts to hang at the city’s most beloved historic cinemas – a craft he says will probably die with him, at least in western Europe. The studios’ own promotional posters serve as a template, but Austrian-born Valien, 65, adds a distinctive pop art flourish to each image coupled with the beauty of imperfection – part of the reason he has managed to extend his career well into the 21st century.

“Advertising is about drawing attention and I add the human touch, which is why it works,” he said. Valien’s work plays up the image’s essence: the imposing bow of a ship, the haunting eyes of a screen siren, a mysterious smile. He jokingly calls himself a Kinosaurier – a play on the German words for cinema and dinosaur….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

May 13, 1937 — Roger Zelazny. (Died 1996).

I’ve mentioned many times that Roger Zelazny, in conjunction with Tolkien, got me into fantasy. And you’ve possibly read my reviews of the collected Roger Zelazny short stories here at File 770. Or one of my many other reviews in various places over the years. 

So what else can I tell you about my relationship with Zelazny that you haven’t read already?  Surely you know that I started with Zelazny’s work with Nine Princes in Amber, and so with Zelazny, I gained a permanent love of multiversal fiction that would lead me to Moorcock and many other authors in due course. Amber also was one of my entry points into RPGs and so along with D&D, and Traveller, and Call of Cthulhu, there was the tiny but influential Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game. So Zelazny has been always a part of my RPG life.

Imagery. Powerfully invoked scenes. Poetic prose (the collected Zelazny, with his poetry, was revelatory as to where all that came from). Sharp archetypal characters, that feel like they came out of a tarot deck (or a Trump deck?) As a stylist, in my personal constellation of reading, he has no equal. 

As I have said in my reading of the collections, I inadvertently stumbled upon many Zelazny stories outside of his novels when I was young, and not knowing what they really were. There are several Zelaznys inside of himself, as he changed, evolved and always trying new things. The author of Amber is also the author of Damnation Alley and also the author of Lord of Light and also the author of “24 views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai”. All of these are very different, and yet indubitably Zelazny.

Zelazny has been part of my reading since the beginning of my SFF reading, and will continue to do so for as long as I have strength. For as long as I have that strength, I will keep walking that Road to Amber, revisiting the sights and wonders Zelazny has left for us along the way.

I never got to meet him, alas. Requiescat in pace

Roger Zelazny

(7) COMICS SECTION.

(8) ON A MISSION. James Bacon’s article “The Leprechaun, and the Irish War on Comics” at downthetubes.net is a companion piece to his article here, “Greann — Ireland’s First Comic Book, from a veteran of the 1916 Rising”.

With its colourful front cover and striking red masthead The Leprechaun may have seemed very attractive to children in 1953, and this tabloid-sized Irish comic feels like it may have been influenced by and created to compete with the likes of the British comic Eagle – but in actual fact it was not, although its publisher, like the Eagle’s editor, the Reverend Marcus Morris, did have similar aims. The Leprechaun was also created to combat “the outcry against the harm being done by imported comics” and to provide for “the need for clean comics” for Irish readers.

As Mr. French of Bray Urban District Council noted about American Comics they “were nothing but sensual cesspools of iniquity” when he proposed a resolution calling on the Minister for Justice to ban the importation of all comics emanating from American publishers (reported in the Irish Independent on Wednesday, 11th June 1952).

The Horror Comics Campaign in Britain that the late Martin Barker so brilliantly wrote of in A Haunt of Fears encompassed a movement between 1949 and 1955 that brought about the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955. The fear was mirrored in Ireland, and comics continually featured in contemporary newspaper reports across the country. 

On 8th November 1952, the Connacht Tribune reported about the “COMICS: DÁIL QUESTION” with the Minister for Justice responding to a question with, “I have no information that objectionable comics are printed in Ireland.”

Into this hot fray of emotion, intellectual anxiety and fear of God, the first issue of the fortnightly comic The Leprechaun was published in early July 1953…..

(9) IF LOVING YOU IS A CRIME, I’LL ALWAYS BE GUILTY. [Item by Steven French.] As with fantasy, so with games – GTA comes over all romantic: “GTA6 gets it on: can the notoriously cynical action series finally find time for romance?” asks the Guardian.

Something new is coming to the Grand Theft Auto universe next year. I don’t mean super-high-definition visuals, or previously unexplored areas of Rockstar’s take on the US. This time it’s something much more profound. If you’ve seen the newly released second trailer from GTA6 – somewhat cruelly released just days after we discovered the game won’t be out until next May – then you might know what I mean. The brand new thing is romance.

It’s now clear that the key protagonists of the latest gangland adventure are Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, two twentysomething lovers from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s ex-army, now working for drug runners; she’s fresh out of jail, looking to make a better life for herself and her beloved mom. They fall for each other, hatch a plan to get out of Vice City, and then when their simple heist goes wrong, they find themselves at the sharp end of a state-wide conspiracy. You always knew that if Rockstar were going to tell a love story, it would involve a formidable cast of underworld kingpins, gang members, conspiracy nuts and corrupt politicians, and you were right….

(10) OLD IN NEW YORK. Deadline is there when “Nicolas Cage Makes Photo Debut As Aging Web Slinger in ‘Spider-Noir’”.

Nicolas Cage made his photo debut in Spider-Noir at Amazon’s annual upfronts presentation this afternoon and can be seen below. Spider-Noir will be available in both black and white and color when it premieres in 2026.

The live-action series from MGM+ and Prime Video, based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir, tells the story of an aging and down-on-his-luck private investigator (Cage) in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero….

(11) ANIME MVP’S. “MLB Anime: Heroes of the Game (ft. Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, more!)”

MLB has teamed up with a crew of creators from the world of anime, tapping animators from One Piece and Full Metal Alchemist to release Heroes of the Game! The power, precision, and skill needed for MLB players to reach the top of their game is almost superhuman. Now, that intensity is being showcased through the world of anime—connecting fans from America, Japan, the UK, and beyond. The campaign features Shohei Ohtani as the Master of Both Sides of the Game, Paul Skenes as the pitcher with ferocious power to unleash, Aaron Judge as the Herculean hitter on a mission to become one of the all-time greats, and Juan Soto as the man who sees all and can change the game with just one swing.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Isaac Arthur’s latest video title made me think of J. G. Ballard’s book. However I am not sure I buy into the concept of complex crystal biology as Isaac does.  (Though I loved Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.) “Crystal Aliens: Life, But Not As We Know It”.

Crystals are not alive, yet they grow, form complex structures, and even conduct electricity. Could life emerge from crystals rather than carbon-based molecules? Explore the intriguing possibility of crystal-based lifeforms, the challenges they would face, and the conditions where they might thrive. We journey to five exotic worlds—Vulcan, Ribbon World, Longenacht, Telluride, and Tempest—each offering unique environments where crystalline life might take hold. Could such life develop naturally, or might humanity one day engineer it? Join us as we dive into the cutting-edge science and speculative possibilities of crystalline biology.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/27/25 Pixel, If You Will, An Ordinary Man, Filing The University’s Ancient Scrolls

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(1) AUTHOR’S ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ABOUT HORROR PUBLISHING GRIEVANCE. Todd Keisling posted a follow-up message on Bluesky to yesterday’s complaint about his experience with Cemetery Dance publisher Richard Chizmar. In the new post he also takes the Horror Writers Association to task.

(2) WHEN THE DEAN OF SCIENCE FICTION WAS A FRESHMAN. A Deep Look by Dave Hook asks, “Was ‘The Runaway Skyscraper’ Really the first SF story by Murray Leinster?” Hook analyzes several rival candidates and explains why they are unpersuasive before agreeing with the canonical answer.

…Finally, we come to novelette “The Runaway Skyscraper“, Argosy and Railroad Man’s Magazine, February 22, 1919, which I also believe is the first SF story by Murray Leinster.

There are some first published stories by authors that are quite stunning and can be considered classics. I wrote about this at Dave’s Favorite First Stories of Science Fiction. I believe there are varying reasons for this, including learning one’s craft at non-genre publications under other names as one common example. “The Runaway Skyscraper”, the 58th story by Murray Leinster published that I know of, is not one of those.

I am not willing to say it’s a “Great” story, or even “Very good”, but I was entertained by it and I have no regrets on reading it….

(3) WEDNESDAY ON THE CALENDAR. Entertainment Weekly says that new cast members include Steve Buscemi, Joanna Lumley, Thandie Newton, Christopher Lloyd, and Lady Gaga: “’Wednesday’ season 2: Release date, cast, plot details, and more”.

…Netflix shared an action-packed teaser trailer for season 2 that highlights Wednesday’s return to Nevermore alongside her family.

“This is the first time you’ve ever willingly returned to a school,” says Morticia. “How does it feel?”

“Like returning to the scene of a crime,” Wednesday deadpans….

…Wednesday’s eight-episode second season will arrive in two installments. The first four episodes strut onto the streamer on August 6, and the last four land on September 3….

(4) MACE WINDU IS FEELING BETTER. “Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen surprise ‘Star Wars’ screening” reports Entertainment Weekly.

The Force was strong at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on Friday.

Star Wars castmates Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson surprised fans when they showed up at a special 20th-anniversary screening of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

Christensen first took the stage at the historic Hollywood cinema while wielding a red lightsaber, telling the crowd that he had “so many amazing memories of making” the final Star Wars prequel, in which Anakin Skywalker embraces the dark side as he becomes Darth Vader and aids Palpatine in his hostile takeover of the Galactic Republic.

“I see a lot of lightsabers out here,” Christensen said to the audience. “I see a lot of red lightsabers, which truth be told is my personal favorite lightsaber color.”

He was then interrupted by the voice of an unseen visitor. “Hold on, Skywalker,” Jackson said from off stage. “This party ain’t even over.”

Christensen then introduced his former costar. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Mace Windu himself, Samuel L. Jackson.”

Jackson seemed thrilled by the audience’s thunderous applause. “This is so, so, so awesome,” he said. “Twenty years later, I can hardly believe that we’re still as popular — as happenin’ — as we are. I haven’t seen Hayden in a while, but so, so, so happy to come back, see him, and see all of you at the same time. Thank you all so much. We had a great time making the film down in Australia. We were hangin’ out, doin’ stuff.”…

(5) IMPERIAL Q&A. Variety quizzes the actor: “’Star Wars’ Star Ian McDiarmid on ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ Playing the Emperor”.

How carefully mapped out was Palpatine’s arc when you were first re-hired to play him in “The Phantom Menace”?

It wasn’t mapped out at all, really. When I first got the part, I had no idea what the world was that I’d be in charge of as the Emperor. So it started off as a big mystery. I had no idea that Palpatine would figure [into the story so heavily]. But by then it so happened that I was young enough to play the younger Senator. When I first met George about it, he said, “Do you know anyone who wants to play an Emperor?” I said, “I think you know the answer to that question.” And then I got the script and realized that he was more than one character, which made it even more fascinating to play — an ordinary, everyday, fairly hypocritical politician with a monster hiding inside his body…

….This is a character who can turn on emotion when needed. What reality are you playing as an actor to be able to tap into those feelings?

Well, he’s a hypocrite, plain and simple — and a very good actor. He’s a performance. He’s only interested in one thing: absolute power. It sounds objective and black and white, but it’s extraordinary. If you think of people who have absolute power or pretty damn near it, you think that’s all they want, really — wealth and to be able to run people. But also, he was a Sith from way back. Now, I don’t really know what that means, but that particular personality is completely different from everybody else. He plays the human, but he isn’t one. Palpatine embodies the dark side. He relishes it. He thinks people who don’t enjoy it or don’t allow themselves to be drawn to it are stupid….

(6) CONQUEST OF SPACE. With ideas from a Willy Ley book with art by Chesley Bonestell, “70 Years Ago, A Forgotten Sci-Fi Failure Secretly Changed The Genre Forever” remembers Inverse.

When Paramount Pictures gave producer George Pal a then-sizable $1.5 million to make Conquest of Space, his idea was to create the most realistic film about space travel yet. Released in 1955, Conquest of Space followed several other sci-fi hits — including 1951’s Destination Moon and When Worlds Collide, and Pal’s arguable masterpiece, 1953’s The War of the Worlds — that established Pal as a purveyor of the kind of sci-fi spectacle that still puts butts in theater seats today.

With Byron Haskin, his War of the Worlds director, returning to the center seat for Conquest of Space, Pal went against standard Hollywood practice and eschewed hiring expensive stars for his movie. In fact, the opening credits don’t even list a single actor; the little-known ensemble, none of which distinguished themselves here, was relegated to the end credits scroll….

…Some aspects of Conquest of Space are accurate for the era, including the length of time it would take to get to Mars, and certain scenes still make an impact (the funeral in which a crew member’s body is released into space foreshadows a similar scene in Alien 24 years later). Real-life concerns about space travel are addressed (albeit with clunky exposition), and the scenes on Mars are also fairly well-conceived in terms of what scientists knew about our closest planetary neighbor… until it snows near the end, providing the astronauts with much-needed water….

(7) BERT TANNER (1933-2024). Artist Seabourne Herbert (Bert) Tanner Jr. of Maine died March 2, 2024 reports the Duxbury Clipper. His resume included 11 covers for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1965 and 1973.

…Bert’s career centered on illustration, animation and working with major New York advertising agencies doing animatics and television test commercials. His earlier career focused on science fiction illustration, comic books, aviation and textbook illustration.

He was commissioned to illustrate the then future NASA lunar landing module and was an animator for the startup children’s show “Sesame Street.” He was a long-standing member of the Society of Illustrators. Bert’s wide range of interests included Crimson Tide Football, photography, music, video, film, kites, birds, meteorology, astronomy, hiking, beach volleyball, skiing, snorkeling, current events, and an extraordinary fascination with flight, specifically World War II aviation. To say he loved art is an understatement, he adored all art. He will be remembered for his wonderful creativity, curious mind and great sense of humor. Bert was drawn to the written word and was known by many for his witty poems and limericks. ‘pop’ loved his family and will always be missed for his creative cartoon cards to mark every family occasion…

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 27, 1922 — Jack Klugman (Died 2012.)

Only three individuals did four or more appearances on Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and Jack Klugman was one of them. 

Let’s discuss his appearances. He was in “A Passage for Trumpet,” “A Game of Pool”, “Death Ship” and “In Praise of Pip”. 

In “A Passage for Trumpet” he’s Joey Crown, a hopeless NYC trumpeteeer with no money, no friends, and no job prospects due to being an alcoholic. He ends in Limbo talking to an Angel. 

Next he’s Jesse Cardiff in “A Game of Pool,” where we get told the story of the best pool player living and the best pool player dead. No points for guessing which he is. 

Now this episode was remade in the eighties Twilight Zone. That version featured Esai Morales as Jesse Cardiff and Maury Chaykin as Fats Brown. This version used the original alternate ending that Johnson intended for the original version. (Nope in keeping with the File 770 policy of not having spoilers if at possible, I’m not telling you what that ending was. After all it’s only been sixty years and some of you might not have seen it yet.) 

The next episode he’s in is definitely SF and based on a Richard Matheson short story with the same title, “Death Ship”. (It was first published in Fantastic Story Magazine, March 1953.) Matheson wrote sixteen episodes of The Twilight Zone including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. Only Serling wrote more. In this episode, a spaceship crew discovers a wrecked replica of their ship with their own dead bodies inside. Klugman plays the Captain Paul Ross.

The model used in this episode of the hovering spaceship is that of a C-57D Cruiser, a leftover prop from Forbidden Planet. It would also be used in the episodes “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “Third from the Sun”. The crashed ship is a model created for this episode.

The final appearance by him is in “In Praise of Pip” where his role is Max Philips,  a crooked bookie, who after learning that his soldier son has suffered a mortal wound in the Vietnam War, apparently encounters a childhood version of his son.

The Twilight Zone streams on Paramount +. 

Jack Klugman in “A Game of Pool”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ISSUES IN GAME HISTORY. “Fallout creator Tim Cain says he was ‘ordered to destroy’ his personal archive of the RPG’s development: ‘Individuals and organizations actively work against preservation’” at GamesRadar+.

With each passing year, game preservation grows more and more relevant, and you can add Fallout creator Tim Cain to the many voices calling for a more serious approach to saving video game history. Cain knows the struggle of actually preserving this stuff better than most – after all, he was ordered to destroy his own Fallout archives when he left developer Interplay.

“There’s a lot of organizations out there that demand to be the archive keeper, and then they do a terrible job at it,” Cain says in a new YouTube vlog. “They lose the assets they were in charge of keeping. This has happened multiple times in my career. When I left Fallout, I was told ‘you have to destroy everything you have,’ and I did. My entire archive. Early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code – gone.”Cain says that Interplay intended to keep an archive internally, but “they lost it. When they finally, a few years after I left, contacted me and said ‘oops, we lost it’ I thought they were trapping me into ‘we’re going to sue you if you say you have it.’ Turns out, no, they really lost it.”…

(11) SOCIAL LEARNING, BRICK BY BRICK. “What makes successful learners? How Minecraft can help us understand social learning” at Phys.org.

The ability to learn socially from one another is a defining feature of the human species. Social learning enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations. And although we are able to build cities full of skyscrapers, send people into space, and collectively develop cures for diseases, most studies investigating social learning mechanisms focus on relatively simple, abstract tasks that bear little resemblance to real-world social learning environments.

As a result, little is known about how humans dynamically integrate asocial and social information in realistic, real-world contexts. To investigate this, an international team of scientists from the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB), the University of Tübingen, and NYU developed a virtual foraging task programmed in the popular video game Minecraft.

In their study, published in Nature Communications, they found that adaptability (i.e. flexibly using asocial and social learning strategies, rather than fixed strategies) is the most important driver of success….

(12) HUBBLE BIRTHDAY E-BOOK IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. To celebrate Hubble’s 35th birthday (how time has flown!) NASA has released a free e-book containing some of the stunning images received over the years, and more! “Hubble’s Beautiful Universe” from NASA Science.

For 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has orbited above Earth’s atmosphere, teaching us more than we ever imagined we could know about our universe and place within it. In addition to Hubble’s extraordinary scientific value, its transformative views of space continue to inspire and shape how we think about the cosmos.

In celebration of this benchmark anniversary, we’re sharing a new, free, and downloadable e-book. Hubble’s Beautiful Universe takes readers on a journey through Hubble’s mission, from 1990 to today, with many of the breathtaking images of the cosmos it’s collected along the way.

This book unfolds Hubble’s long-ranging story decade by decade, highlighting each era’s contributions to astronomy. It showcases Hubble’s important “firsts” that changed the way we understand our universe, and also explains the groundbreaking scientific concepts that Hubble studies, like mysterious dark matter and our universe’s accelerating expansion.

From groundbreaking astronaut servicing missions, to record-shattering observations, to jaw-dropping peeks into the deepest reaches of space, Hubble has shown Earth a universe more beautiful and more mysterious than anyone could have understood before its launch. As the Hubble team anticipates more years of discovery ahead, Hubble’s Beautiful Universe offers an exciting overview of the first 35 years of NASA’s most prolific astronomy mission.

(13) 10 EXPECTATION DEFYING SF/F BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Book Pilled has an interesting life collecting and selling SF/F books. He is also an avid reader.  Here he reveals 10 SF/F books that defied his expectations in a 20 minute video.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/14/25 Peter And The Dire Wolf

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(1) SARA FELIX UPDATE. Sara Felix, whose husband was badly injured when their new house blew up yesterday, has given Facebook friends a news update.

The girls have such a nurturing bunch of moms that have watched them while I am at the hospital.

The community was damaged by this not just us. It is scary how big of an accident it was.

We hadn’t moved in so the girls are at the current house. Cheeto and everyone is fine.

Keith is stable and is through surgery. He has burns on a large percentage of his body, but he is recovering.

(2) AUREALIS AWARDS. The 2024 Aurealis Awards shortlists were announced today. Complete information at the link.

(3) FAAN AWARDS. The winners of the FAAn Awards for fanzine achievement were revealed yesterday in the UK. The full list is here: “2025 FAAn Awards”.

(4) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM DATES AND CALL FOR PAPERS. The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas has set the dates for the 2025 Sturgeon Symposium.

The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction is pleased to announce our 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium, to be held October 9-10, 2025. In addition to presenting the annual Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story, which will include a reading from the winner, we are delighted to announce that Darcie Little Badger has accepted our invitation to speak at the symposium. 

We have opened our call for papers where we invite papers, panel proposals, and roundtable discussions that engage with this year’s theme: “Expanding Speculative Horizons.” Inspired by Darcie Little Badger’s diverse contributions to SF (novels, short stories, comics, etc.), we encourage a wide range of submissions, especially those that reflect upon expansive understandings of speculative expression.

We encourage you to submit and share our CFP widely. Below you will find the link to our CFP with more details on the event and guidelines for proposals. Deadlines for submissions is May 19.

(5) DOCTOR WHO HISTORY. [Item by Nickpheas.] Front Row on BBC Radio 4 has quite a long feature on the new series of Doctor Who which spread to cover the history of the show, and even a brief interview with Waris Hussein, the original director (who I didn’t realize was still alive). “…Doctor Who new series & impact on culture…”. Doctor Who feature starts 11:20 in.

(6) RUSSELL T DAVIES Q&A. Parade tries to find out what’s coming in this season and the next: “’Doctor Who’ Boss Russell T Davies Breaks Down That ‘Earth-Shattering’ Premiere Twist”.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the modern incarnation of Doctor Who, which you helped bring on screen. What have you learned most over the course of working on so many episodes and with so many Doctors?
I mean, it’s astonishing. I just look exactly the same. So clearly, I’m made of Adamantium. It’s funny because actually, a couple of years ago, the BBC said, “You want to celebrate the 20th anniversary.” And I said, “We’ve just had a 60th anniversary!” And on Disney+, it’s only two years old, so no, so we chose not to. Now we get to the 20th, and everyone’s talking about the 20th. And I feel a bit stupid. We didn’t really do anything to celebrate it. Someone at the BBC is making a documentary, so that’ll be out in a couple of months.

I think about Doctor Who, you learn something new with every single episode. It was different. Now this year, coming out in Episode 2, this year, we go to Miami in 1952, where there’s a living cartoon. The cartoon has stepped out of the cinema screen, voiced by Alan Cumming. So, for that, we all had to learn hand-drawn animation. I’ve worked in television for a million years. And I’ve done graphics, I’ve done CGI. I’ve never actually done hand-drawn animation before, which was amazing.

What I did learn is it’s 15 times more meetings than anything else I’ve ever done. [Laughs.] But it’s wonderful. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I appreciate the skill of the animator more than ever. And Doctor Who has always done that. Always every week, it’s different. I mean, last year, we sort of said to ourselves, “Can we do an episode where the enemy is just an old woman who stands 73 yards away?” And we did, and it worked. So you have to take these very deep breaths and sort of say, “Is this going to work?” And have faith in it. So it teaches you something different every single time. And 20 years whizzes past in a flash….

… As we’re just starting out Season 2 on Disney+, are you already in the planning stages for Season 3?
We’ll always look ahead to the future if we get the chance to keep running. I’ve got ideas. “I think I’ll do that near [Season] 4 or 5.” And that’s always the way I’ve worked on things. So yes, I could promise you amazing stuff at the end of Season 4. There are things we’ve already mentioned that are going to bear fruit a long time into the future. So that’s just the fun of it. That’s the fun of Doctor Who. But, to say again, it’s the pit stops along the way….

(7) NAME THAT ORBIT. Mental Floss challenges readers: “Can You Match the Moon to the Planet It Belongs To?” Take the quiz at the link. Uh, after Earth and the Moon, my hit rate rapidly declined. I got 41%. You can do better!

(8) SF WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A WARNING, NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE. Sam Freedman’s latest column in The Guardian is: “The big idea: will sci-fi end up destroying the world?”

One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk. The Scottish author was an outspoken socialist who could never understand why rightwing fans liked novels that were so obviously an attack on their worldview….

… Musk isn’t alone in his enthusiasms. Mark Zuckerberg has renamed his company and sunk $100bn in pursuit of the “metaverse”, a word that first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. So obsessed is Zuckerberg with the book – in which people plug into a simulated world to avoid a real one fallen into dystopian chaos – that at one point all product managers at Facebook were asked to read it as part of their training. Snow Crash also inspired the development of Google Earth, and was mandatory reading for the Xbox development team at Microsoft. Jeff Bezos loves Stephenson so much that he hired him to work for his Blue Origin rocket company.

If sci-fi’s influence was simply on product design, it wouldn’t be a problem. If Zuckerberg wants to burn his own cash in pursuit of a personal fantasy, or Musk wants to build hideous cars, that’s their call. It may even inspire something genuinely useful from time to time….

…The real issue is that sci-fi hasn’t just infused the tech moguls’ commercial ideas but also their warped understanding of society and politics. The dominant genre of sci-fi in the 80s and 90s, when today’s Silicon Valley overlords were growing up, was Cyberpunk – as exemplified in the novels of William Gibson (who invented the term “cyberspace”) and Stephenson, as well as any number of films and video games. The grandfather of the genre was Philip K Dick, whose novels and short stories spawned films including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.

https://dff5fe6618baf1dc9a69a0f44e8ea6da.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-41/html/container.html Dick’s stories were fuelled by amphetamine-driven paranoia. Nothing can be trusted and nobody is who they appear to be. It’s a style that’s arguably had more impact on modern culture and aesthetics than any other. The Matrix (1999) is just one example of Dick’s wider influence: he had often spoken of other worlds and suggested our own reality was a simulation.

As historian Richard Hofstadter noted in his famous 1964 essay, the “paranoid style” has been a feature of rightwing American politics for a long time – but The Matrix has given it a new vocabulary and imagery….

(9) PKD AT MEDIA DEATH CULT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult is really into Philip K. Dick.  He has just posted a quick guide to the author. You can see the 24 minute video below…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Probe series (1988)

Thirty-seven years ago on this date, the Probe series ended its seven-episode run, not by any means the shortest run of a series we’ve looked at – several, such as Nightmare Cafe and Space Rangers, lasted only six episodes. Can anyone recall a genre series that lasted less episodes? I’m sure there is one. 

It was co- created by Michael I. Wagner and Isaac Asimov. Asimov had quite some background in television SF series and Wagner was previously known for creating Hill Street Blues. (You can purchase all one hundred forty episodes at Apple TV+ for just $39.95!) 

Here Asimov co-created, produced and according to ImDB was involved in writing all of the eight scripts. That’s not particularly surprising to me that he did that given how prolific he was. 

The pilot and series starred Parker Stevenson as Austin James, an asocial genius who solved high tech crimes, and Ashley Crow as James’ new secretary Mickey Castle. Stevenson’s only major casting was on Baywatch.  Row has a serious genre credit as she played Sandra Bennett on Heroes. That series is streaming on Peacock. And no, I really don’t care if Baywatch is streaming anywhere.

It aired on ABC just once and was re-aired on Syfy, though they edited the episodes to stuff in extra commercials as they did every series they aired which they hadn’t produced. 

What happened to it? Did poor ratings doom it? No, they didn’t. As one reviewer notes, “Together, these two encounter out-of-control experiments, supernatural events, and mysterious deaths. As you might expect, Probe features heavy doses of scientific knowledge and logical reasoning, but was cut short due to the 1988 writers strike.” 

Remember the Australian-filmed Mission: Impossible shot during the writers strike was only a go because they dug into the file drawers of the first series and used not filmed scripts. Or possibly Grave’s  brain. 

It is not streaming anywhere. Except Space Rangers, I find really short run series that were not done as miniseries tend not to be streamed. 

Do I have to say that all those YouTube copies are illegal, so links will be, oh, need I say it?

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) YMMV DURING HOLY WEEK. There is a surprising sf film mentioned in this NPR story. “Revisiting our favorite (and not so favorite) religious films” at NPR.

DETROW: And even for those of us who live more secular lives, movies continue to offer a bit of a cinematic catechism with stories from the Bible and other religious traditions. And with Passover and Holy Week underway, we figured it would be a good time to talk about faith and film. I’m joined by NPR’s religion correspondent, Jason DeRose. Hey, Jason….

… DEROSE: Well, I have a very specific group of religion movies that I actually like quite a lot, and they are comedies. They’re the Monty Python films – “The Life Of Brian,” “The Holy Grail,” “The Meaning Of Life.” “The Meaning Of Life” has one of the funniest songs I ever heard in my life – “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”…

…MARTIN: The other film that I – is, like, “Arrival,” for example…

DETROW: Yes.

MARTIN: …Which is, again, like, science – it’s supposedly science fiction, right? But, like, I think a lot of films in sci-fi also – or that are technically sci-fi actually live in a – to me, in a spiritual space because they ask hard questions. What is the meaning of existence, and how do we know?…

(13) WHIP IT GOOD! Inverse tells how “’Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’ Just Got A Lot More Fun”. (See the Launch Trailer on YouTube.)

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle was one of the best games of 2024. Machine Games’ remarkable fusion of stealth gameplay, detailed open-ended levels, and a dogged faithfulness to the film series was a match made in heaven. Now, just a week ahead of its PlayStation 5 debut, The Great Circle is getting a few new additions that will make re-experiencing this modern classic worthwhile.

The Great Circle Title Update 4 will add entirely new perks for players to take advantage of in combat, over a dozen quality of life improvements, and a new hilarious use for an often underutilized item in the game.

The biggest item on the list is two new Adventure Books. One is called “Open Season,” which makes enemies more vulnerable to follow-up damage after getting hit with Indy’s whip. The second is called “Sleight of Hand,” which lets Indy use his whip to pull an enemy’s weapon towards him after doing a disarm whip attack. For players partial to the game’s optional gunplay, Sleight of Hand will add new strategy and variety to how ranged combat encounters play out.

For the more melee-focused player, Indy now has a secondary use for repair kits. These consumables are typically used to give more longevity to Indy’s makeshift weapon of choice. But The Great Circle is so chock-full of random pick-ups that they can often go ignored through most (if not all) of a single playthrough. Machine Games has made note of this player trend and adjusted things accordingly.

“Some of you have told us that you don’t have much use for Repair Kits,” the update’s patch notes read. “Well, now you can throw them at your enemies!”…

(14) WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE. Learn “How climate change could disrupt the construction and operations of US nuclear submarines” at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

…In recent years, the Defense Department has started to acknowledge climate change as a “threat multiplier”—albeit slowly. Acknowledging the billions of dollars climate change could cost the Navy in the future, the Pentagon now incorporates inclement weather disasters and other climate effects into military planning and base structures. However, during the first Trump administration, the Navy quietly ended the climate change task force put in place by the Obama administration, which taught naval leaders how to adapt to rising sea levels. As the new Trump administration wipes all mention of climate change and other environmental measures from federal agency websites, climate-related measures may also be halted despite being critical for the viability of naval missions.

Most of the naval construction and operations infrastructure for the United States’ ballistic missile submarines are located on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Due to sea level rise and increased inclement weather attributed to climate change, these facilities are becoming more vulnerable to flooding. The intensity and number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic region have increased since the 1980s and will continue to do so as ocean temperatures keep rising, further threatening coastal areas. These incidents are highly costly and disruptive to operations. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the Defense Department has 1,700 coastal military installations that could be impacted by sea level rise. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida suffered $4.7 billion in damages from Hurricane Michael.

Infrastructure at risk. General Dynamics Electric Boat—the lead contractor for the new Columbia-class submarines—performs over three-quarters of the construction operations for the 12 new ships at its two shipbuilding facilities located in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Both facilities are in at-risk flood areas….

(15) IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Science by definition is arguable genre-adjacent to SF.  So no better a time for an appeal for reason.

The world’s two leading multi-disciplinary journals, Nature and Science have in the past month had a series of articles and news items reporting on how science in the US is being dismantled, and how it is being mis-represented by politicians on a range of issues from climate change to vaccines.

Ironically, Brit Prof Dave Kipping moved to US for his career and now many scientists are moving back and some US scientists are leaving.  See his 12-minute video from the Cool Worlds Lab…

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Andrew (not Werdna).] DeForest Kelley was apparently well-prepared for Trek: “DeForest Kelley on The Millionaire”. Watch until the end.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/3/25 Pixels First, Or Multiverse First? Cosmologists Want To Know

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(1) ‘WONDERLAND’ SF DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The UK free-to-air channel Sky Arts is showing the first of a four-part documentary series Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age tonight at 8pm UK time. And it will air again on Saturday April 5 at 3:40 p.m.

Unusually, it looks to be focused on literary SF; the episode descriptions only mention film/TV/etc for the final episode.  The trailer shows talking heads clips from a number of well-known UK-based critics, academics and authors, including John Clute, Farah Mendlesohn, Adam Roberts and Tade Thompson.

A description of the four episodes as taken from the Fine Books & Collections website:

  • Episode I – Mary Shelley to Isaac Asimov (April 3)

The creation and detonation of two atomic bombs developed by science fiction reading scientists is followed by an exploration of early science fiction writers including Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. It also features Kurt Vonnegut’s experience of being firebombed in 1944 in a prison in Dresden (Slaughterhouse Five) and J.G. Ballard’s war experiences in the Far East (Empire of the Sun). The fear of nuclear apocalypse is portrayed in a range of work including Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. The episode concludes with the work of Isaac Asimov.

  • Episode II – Arthur C. Clarke to Ray Bradbury (April 10)

The work of Isaac Asimov leads to the sense of wonder that surrounded 1960s’ space exploration, embodied in the work of Arthur C. Clarke such as Childhood’s End and The Nine Billion Names of God. Also included are J.G. Ballard’s concern with “inner space” and apocalyptic events (Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, The Drowned World), the work of Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), and Stanislaw Lem (Solaris). The episode concludes with discussions of the menacing alternative worlds of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

  • Episode III – Margaret Atwood to Ted Chiang (April 17)

Writers like Ursula le Guin and Octavia Butler challenged conventional notions of gender. Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale created a more political, dystopian model to illustrate relations between genders becoming oppressive. Samuel Delaney (Babel-17, Dhalgren) questioned in the late 1960s and 1970s what it meant to be a person as the complexion of science fiction is seen to have changed, becoming less white and straight and American and British than it used to be in the Golden Age or the age of the pulps or even in the New Wave.

  • Episode IV – Quatermass to Christopher Nolan (April 24)

Discussion of the success of John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids is followed by the long running and immensely successful Dr Who. Science fiction’s prescient concern with cyberspace and artificial intelligence is illustrated through the work of writers like William Gibson, William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick.

A trailer can be seen at the above link, or on the Sci-Fi-London website.  Starburst has a brief Q&A with the creator of the series, and there’s a positive review by someone who’s seen all four episodes.

The first episode is preceded by an apparently-unrelated documentary Douglas Adams: The Man Who Imagined Our Future; the UK comedy site Beyond the Joke has an overview, and there’s an an interview by the Radio Times with Adams’ collaborator John Lloyd.

(2) YEAR’S BEST CANADIAN KICKSTARTER. Stephen Kotowych has launched a Kickstarter to fund “Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume 3”.

This year’s cover image is “Repair Station 73” by Pascal Blanché.

After highly successful campaigns for Volume One in 2023 and Volume Two in 2024, Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume Three will help us cement the status of this series as the calling card anthology showing readers the powerful fantastical fiction being written by the Canadian F&SF community today.

If this project successfully funds, we’ll publish a reprint anthology made up of 50,000 words of today’s very best Canadian fantasy and science fiction. And, with YOUR help, we can make this a much longer anthology–see the Stretch Goals section below for details on how this could grow to be a 150,000 word anthology.

Stories written by Canadians appear in magazines both at home and abroad, on websites, in anthologies, and in zines. Some markets are well-known; others are smaller and might be missed. Some are free to read; some require subscriptions. And once the next issue of a magazine comes out, or an anthology goes out of print, or a publisher shuts down, these stories become hard to find and risk disappearing.

…And in the spirit of shopping Canadian, for Volume Three, I will be using a local book printer who did a very nice short run of Volume Two for me. Their books look great and their turnaround time is quick, so I’m looking forward to them printing the full run for me this year.

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Andrea Hairston and Ursula Whitcher on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Where: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

Andrea Hairston

Novelist, Andrea Hairston ran away from the physics lab to the theatre as a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since. Novels: Archangels of Funk; Will Do Magic For Small Change, a NYT, (the latter an Editor’s pick & finalist for the Mythopoeic, Lambda, & Otherwise Awards); Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the Otherwise & Carl Brandon Award; Master of Poisons was on the Kirkus Review’s Best SF&F of 2020; and Mindscape, coming from Tordotcom, August, 2025.

Ursula Whitcher

Ursula Whitcher is a writer, poet, and mathematician whose collection of interwoven short stories, North Continent Ribbon, is published by Neon Hemlock Press. Ursula lives in Michigan with a spouse who works on high-voltage outer space experiments and two cats who work on lounging by heating vents. Look for more of Ursula’s writing in magazines such as Asimov’s and Analog or in the American Mathematics Society‘s Feature Column

(4) ALFIES: WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT. In his report on “A Scottish Worldcon” at Not A Blog, George R.R. Martin recalls why he held the original Alfies ceremony in 2015, the first year the Sad and Rabid Puppies monopolized the Hugo ballot:

…A number of writers and fans who would surely have been nominated for a Hugo Award were squeezed out when the Puppies (Sad and Rabid) stuffed the ballot with their own favorites.   There was no way to rectify that (though various people tried, with everything from wooden asterisks to rules reform to voting No Award).   My own approach was the Alfies; consolation  trophies made of old hood ornaments, like many of the early Hugo Awards, given to writers and fans who missed out on nominations they likely would have gotten in a normal year….

He gave more Alfies in 2016. He skipped 2016 after that the purpose of them changed to just being nice tokens for people he thought should be honored. One Alfie was given in 2018 to John Picacio for the Mexicanx Initiative. At Dublin 2019 he presented Jane Johnson and Malcolm Edwards with Alfie Awards for Editing. But in 2024 they resumed their original purpose of calling attention to people unjustly denied their place on the Hugo Ballot.

Martin details why one of the victims of the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo shenanigans, R.F. Kuang, got an Alfie.

…The final Alfie of the night went to R.F.  KUANG for her novel BABEL, OR THE NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE,, which received 810 nominations, the third highest total.   Nonethelss, there was no place on the ballot her.  That was especially egregious, I thought, since BABEL would have had an excellent chance of coming out on top if the book had been nominated.  The novel had already won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award, among other honors; a Hugo would have given it a rare sweep of SF’s most prestigious awards.  Alas, BABEL never got the chance to contend.

But it did get an Alfie.  And Rebecca herself was there to collect it.

Will there be more Alfies in the years to come?  Only time will tell….

(5) RECOMMENDED READING. The New York Times supplies a whole chart to help you find “The Best Fantasy Novels to Read Right Now” – link bypasses the paywall.

The editors of The New York Times Book Review bring you cross-genre fantasy books, our favorite recent romantasy reads, books that will transport you to other worlds, our latest reviews, thrilling historical fantasies, the essential Tanith Lee, new series fantasy novels and more!

(6) WAYWARD WORMHOLE 2026. Cat Rambo’s Wayward Wormhole workshop will meet in Barbados from February 7-21, 2026. The focus will be on “The Art of the Novella”. Applications close May 15, 2025. Full details at the link.

Novellas are growing in popularity, and we want to help yours stand out.

Structurally, they can get tricky—they’re not mini-novels anymore than children are mini-adults—while still demanding full, fleshy, character arcs and immersive descriptions.

WHERE: Oistins area, Christ Church, Barbados. FEE:  $2,500.00 US (travel, accommodations, and food NOT included)

(7) THROUGH A MIRROR DARKLY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The first 15 minutes of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row earlier this week had an interview with Charlie Brooker, the writer behind Black Mirror. You can download it here.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 3, 1999 — The Lost World series

Twenty-six years ago, something that had been made into a film at least seven times was made into a series. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, often shortened to just The Lost World, premiered this day in syndication in the States. (The first adaptation was made in 1925, and author Doyle appears in a preface to that film, though not all existing prints have him as some were cut, often radically.)

It was based very loosely as you well know on Doyle’s The Lost World novel and includes John Landis among its bevy of executive producers. The actual producer was Darrly Sheen who was the line producer on Time Trax and who did the same on several episodes of the Australian version of Mission: Impossible. The latter is a series that I like a lot which is not streaming anywhere. Did you did every episode used a script that not chosen for an expose during the run of the original series? Well it did. It marked the last appearance of Graves as Phelps as in the films the character goes bad and he wouldn’t do that. 

Guess where this series was produced? It was done at Village Roadshow Studios, Oxenford, Queensland, Australia.  Other productions of note done there include Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge and Aquaman.

The initial cast was Peter McCauley as Professor George Edward Challeger, Rachel Blakely, as Marguerite Krux, Jennifer O’Dell as Veronica Layton, William deVry as Ned Malone and William Snow as Lord John Richard Roxton and Michael Sinelnikoff as Professor Arthur Summerlee. It would have way, way too many guest performers as it had at least or more generally every episode to list here. Suffice it say that if you watched any series that was made in Australia or. New Zealand then, it’s likely one or more of them could well grace this series. 

They lived in a giant tree house, really they did, one with many conveniences that rival what you and I have in a sort of Victorian peusdo-scientific fashion, and had many a fantastical adventure, none of which I’d say had anything to do with The Lost World novel unless there’s reptile people in there that I missed when I read it. It lasted three seasons consisting of sixty-six episodes. It was cancelled when funding for another season fell through. It’s on Amazon Prime right now.

Personal opinion? It was fun and I certainly don’t regret the time that I took to watch it. It was quite pulpy (Doc Savage would have fit right in here) and as long as you don’t expect it to have anything to do with the novel, you will enjoy a Thirties-style concept updated to contemporary standards. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) PROJECT HAIL MARY. “Ryan Gosling Plays a Nerdy Scientist on a Suicidal Space Mission in ‘Project Hail Mary’ CinemaCon Trailer: ‘I Put the Not in Astronaut’” at Variety.

Ryan Gosling, looking very nerdy and quite un-Ken-like, plays a science teacher turned grudging astronaut in “Project Hail Mary,” a sci-fi adventure that Amazon MGM Studios teased during its presentation to theater owners at CinemaCon on Wednesday.

“I put the ‘not’ in astronaut,” Gosling tells the government handler (Sandra Hüller) who has tapped him to undertake a suicidal space mission. “I can’t even moonwalk.”

The film, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel of the same name, follows an ordinary man who is told he has what it takes to go into the outer reaches of the universe. “You have the right stuff,” Gosling tells Hüller. “I have the wrong stuff.”…

(11) NINTENDO’S NEW CONSOLE. [Item by Steven French.] This week’s gaming newsletter from the Guardian:“Everything we learned from Nintendo’s ‘deep dive’ into the Switch 2”.

Sixty minutes – that’s how long Nintendo took on Wednesday afternoon to remind us that no other video game manufacturer creates joy like this one. It was the Nintendo livestream we’ve been waiting for: a deep dive into the new console after so much speculation. Sure, the Switch 2 is the company’s first real hardware sequel – an updated and spruced-up version of its predecessor rather than a radical new piece of kit. But the updates are the intriguing part.

Naturally, we’re getting a larger (7.9-inch, to be precise) screen that displays in full HD at 1080p; but we’re also getting re-thought Joy-Con controllers that now click to the console via strong magnets rather than those fiddly sliders we all put on the wrong way. The buttons are larger, too, so adults will be able to play Mario Kart with some semblance of skill. But the main new feature for the controllers is a new rollerball that enables each one to operate as a mouse. This will allow for new point-and-click features and some interesting control options. I like that they showed this off with a wheelchair basketball game, where you slide the controllers a long a surface to mimic pushing the wheels….

(12) JUSTWATCH QUARTERLIES. JustWatch has released their first quarter 2025 US streaming video on demand market share report — and as always, it’s based on data from over 15 million monthly JustWatch users in the US. The report tracks streaming interest by analyzing user behavior like filtering platforms, engaging with titles, and clicking through to offers.

Highlights from Q1 2025:

  • Prime Video takes the lead at 21%, just ahead of Netflix at 20%.
  • Max (13%) and Disney+ (12%) are neck-and-neck in the second tier.
  • Hulu holds 10%, while Apple TV+ (8%) and Paramount+ (7%) follow.
  • Peacock and Starz both captured 2% of market share.

SVOD Market Shares in Q1 2025. In a highly competitive landscape, Prime Video edged out Netflix to claim the leading position in Q1 2025 with a 21% market share. Netflix followed closely with 20%, making it a tight race at the top. Max secured third place at 13%, narrowly ahead of Disney+ at 12%, while Hulu held 10% of the market, closing the gap between them and the top three.

The remaining platforms—including Apple TV+, Paramount+, and services like Peacock and Starz—collectively accounted for the remaining share of the market. These figures reflect shifting user preferences as viewers navigate an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape.

Market Share Development in Q1 2025. Short-term growth trends between December 2024 and March 2025 showed modest but notable shifts. Disney+ and Starz each gained +1%, signaling increased user interest. In contrast, Paramount+ experienced the most significant drop, falling -2% over the same period. Most major platforms—including Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu—remained stable throughout the quarter, suggesting consistent user engagement at the top.

Year-over-Year Comparison. Comparing Q1 2025 to Q1 2024, Peacock Premium and Starz demonstrated the strongest growth, each up +1% on average. Disney+ also showed positive momentum, while Paramount+ saw the largest decline at -2% year-over-year. Max and Netflix each slipped slightly with -1%, despite remaining major players in the U.S. streaming ecosystem.

(13) UNIVERSAL UP? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Sure looks like this is what this study implies, that there’s a universal up/north. “The distribution of galaxy rotation in JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey” in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society at Oxford Academic.

JWST provides a view of the Universe never seen before, and specifically fine details of galaxies in deep space. JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) is a deep field survey, providing unprecedentedly detailed view of galaxies in the early Universe. The field is also in relatively close proximity to the Galactic pole. Analysis of spiral galaxies by their direction of rotation in JADES shows that the number of galaxies in that field that rotate in the opposite direction relative to the Milky Way galaxy is ∼50  per cent higher than the number of galaxies that rotate in the same direction relative to the Milky Way. The analysis is done using a computer-aided quantitative method, but the difference is so extreme that it can be noticed and inspected even by the unaided human eye. 

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “’Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld’ Drops Trailer ahead of May 4 Premiere” – Animation Magazine sets the frame.

Today, Disney+ released the trailer, key art and stills for Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, an all-new anthology series of animated shorts from creator Dave Filoni, premiering exclusively on Disney+ just in time for the “Star Wars holiday,” May the 4th. Synopsis: The series of animated Star Wars anthologies, which began in 2022 with Tales of the Jedi and continued in 2024 with Tales of the Empire, this time focuses on the criminal underbelly of the galaxy through the experiences of two iconic villains.

Former assassin and bounty hunter Asajj Ventress is given a new chance at life and must go on the run with an unexpected new ally, while outlaw Cad Bane faces his past when he confronts an old friend, now a Marshal on the opposite side of the law.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/10/25 (SF/F Reference) + (Cultural Reference|770 Jargon) / Pun ~= (Scroll Title)

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(1) BULWER-LYTTON RIDES OFF INTO THE SUNSET. Last week Scott Rice told fans of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “Au Revoir, Noble Bulweriers!”

It is with deep regrets that I announce the conclusion of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.  Being a year and a half older than Joseph Biden, I find the BLFC becoming increasingly burdensome and would like to put myself out to pasture while I still have some vim and vigor!

When I initiated the competition in 1983, inviting entrants to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels, I never dreamed that we would receive thousands of entrants from all over the U.S. and the globe, or that the contest would survive for over four decades. 

​I am especially grateful to our entrants for keeping the contest alive and to our Panel of Undistinguished Judges who dutifully selected each year’s “winners.”  And, of course, I would like to thank my daughter, EJ, who has been indispensable the last several years of the contest.  It’s been 42 good years but, alas, all good things must come to an end. Rest assured we’re keeping the BLFC spirit alive by maintaining our archive for posterity so that generations and generations hence may witness your greatness!

(2) ERRATA REDUX. The UK’s SF Gateway bookselling site is having a little trouble identifying author “William Rotsler”, co-author with Gregory Benford of Shiva Descending. As Andrew Porter pointed out to them, this is a photo of Robert Silverberg.

It isn’t the first time something like this has happened to Rotsler. When he was the 1973 Worldcon Fan Guest of Honour, the designer of TorCon 2’s program book erroneously ran a photo of John Schoenherr instead of Rotsler. (Coincidentally, Robert Silverberg was the author of that 1973 bio!)

(3) DROPPING FAST. The Guardian reports “US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms”.

The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.

Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia….

(4) NEW DAVE HOOK POSTS. A Deep Look by Dave Hook praises “’Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art’, Indrapramit Das editor, 2024 The MIT Press”.

The Short: I recently read Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art, Indrapramit Das editor, 2024 The MIT Press. My favorites of the ten short stories were “Encore“, by Wole Talabi, “The Quietude” by Lavie Tidhar, and “Autumn’s Red Bird“, by Aliette de Bodard. The essays and art were great also. My overall rating was 3.88/5, or “Great”. Strongly recommended.

And for an encore, Dave Hook shares “My 2025 Hugo Nominations”. His list includes —

Best Related Work nomination:

I nominated “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion“, Chris Barkley & Jason Sanford Author/Editors, File770/Genre Grapevine, February 14, 2024.

(5) FUTURE TENSE. February’s Future Tense Fiction story is “Mothering the Bay,” by Deji Bryce Olukotun—a story about AI, misinformation, and parenting, set on the BART public transit system in California’s Bay Area.

The response essay, “The Awareness Imperative”, is by educational technologist Babe Liberman.

 (6) PAGING CAPTAIN PIKE’S BARBER. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Character Posters” – there are 13 images in the gallery. The Captain looks like he stuck his head out a porthole while the ship was at Warp 3. I rather like the photo of Scotty, though.

Paramount+ reveals new character art for Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

The new character art features Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as First Officer Una Chin-Riley, Ethan Peck as Spock, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La’An Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas and Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M’Benga.

In addition to the main cast, we have recurring guests Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk, Melanie Scrofano as Marie Batel, Martin Quinn as Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, and Carol Kane as Pelia.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is based on the years Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike
Martin Quinn as Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott

(7) KAZUO ISHIGURO Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] With a 20th Anniversary special edition of his science fiction novel Never Let Me Go about to be published, Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro is interviewed by the Guardian and discussed his openness to speculative fiction, his own opinion of his prose style and the dangers posed by the increasing use of AI: “’AI will become very good at manipulating emotions’: Kazuo Ishiguro on the future of fiction and truth”.

Never Let Me Go had a long gestation period, as Ishiguro explains in his introduction to a new edition; for many years, it existed merely as thoughts and notes about a group of students whose lifespan – perhaps as the result of a nuclear accident – was markedly different from their peers. The breakthrough came via a combination of external factors and timing: societal interest in the potential benefits and dangers of cloning, at its most headline-grabbing in the shape of Dolly the sheep; and a shift in writing and publishing that made a place in so-called literary novels for the techniques and practices of speculative fiction.

“I gave myself permission to use what traditionally might have been called genre tropes,” Ishiguro explains. “And that wasn’t because I was being terribly brave or anything. I think the climate around me changed; the next generation of writers, people about 15 years younger than me, didn’t see anything weird about it, at least the people I happened to become friends with, David Mitchell or Alex Garland. They were taking their cues from all kinds of places and I really liked their work.”

(8) SIMON FISHER-BECKER (1961-2025). “Simon Fisher-Becker dead: ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Doctor Who’ actor was 63” reports USA Today.

Simon Fisher-Becker, a British actor known for his roles on “Doctor Who” and in the first “Harry Potter” film, has died. He was 63.

Fisher-Becker’s death was confirmed by his agency in a statement issued to USA TODAY on Monday.

“Today, I lost not only a client Simon Fisher-Becker, but a close personal friend of 15 years standing,” the statement said. “I shall never forget the phone call I made to him when he was offered the part of ‘Dorium’ in Dr Who. He had been a fan of the show since he was a child.

“Simon was also a writer, a raconteur and a great public speaker. He helped me out enormously and was always kind, gracious and interested in everyone. My condolences go to his husband Tony, his brother, nieces and nephews and his legion of fans.”

Fisher-Becker portrayed the Fat Friar, a ghost from Hufflepuff, who appeared in 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” In the film, he comes through the floor of the Hogwarts dining hall as several ghosts arrive, including Nearly Headless Nick.

The actor also starred as Dorium Maldovar on the British sci-fi series “Doctor Who.” He played the role in the fifth and sixth seasons of the modern reboot opposite Matt Smith’s Doctor….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway wins the Hugo for Best Novel (1978)

Forty-six years ago at IguanaCon II, where Tim Kyger was the Chair, Harlan Ellison was the pro guest, and Bill Bowers was the fan guest, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway wins the Hugo for Best Novel. 

The other nominated works for that year were The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Time Storm by Gordon R. Dickson and Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. 

It was serialized in the November and December 1976 issues of Galaxy prior to its hardcover publication by St. Martin’s Press. A short concluding chapter, cut before publication, was later published in the August 1977 issue of Galaxy.

It would win damn near every other major Award there was as it garnered the John Campbell Memorial for Best Science Fiction Novel, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Nebula Award for Novel and even the Prix Pollo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel published in France. It was nominated for but did not win the Australian Ditmar Award. 

It’s the opening novel in the Heechee saga, with four sequels that followed. It is a most exceptional series. I’ve read I think all of them. 

I’m chuffed that Pohl was voted a Hugo for Best Fan Writer at Aussiecon 4. Who can tell what works got him this honor? 

Gateway of course is available at the usual suspects. 

If I’m remembering right, there was talk of a film for awhile.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) THE NEXT DISRUPTION. The Guardian asks, “Are AI-generated video games really on the horizon?”

Another month, another revolutionary generative AI development that will apparently fundamentally alter how an entire industry operates. This time tech giant Microsoft has created a “gameplay ideation” tool, Muse, which it calls the world’s first Wham, or World and Human Action Model. Microsoft claims that Muse will speed up the lengthy and expensive process of game development by allowing designers to play around with AI-generated gameplay videos to see what works.

Muse is trained on gameplay data from UK studio Ninja Theory’s game Bleeding Edge. It has absorbed tens of thousands of hours of people’s real gameplay, both footage and controller inputs. It can now generate accurate-looking mock gameplay clips for that game, which can be edited and adapted with prompts.

All well and good, but in an announcement video for Muse, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer caused confusion when he said that it could be invaluable for the preservation of classic games: AI models, he implied, could “learn” those games and emulate them on modern hardware. It’s not clear how this would be possible. Further muddying the waters, Microsoft’s overall CEO Satya Nadella then implied in a podcast interview that Muse was the first step in creating a “catalogue” of AI-generated games.

But Muse, as it stands, can’t create a game – it can only create made-up footage of a game. So just what is this new gaming AI tool? A swish addition to game developers’ tool belts? Or the first step towards an era of AI-generated gaming detritus?…

(12) CLIPPING SERVICE. Filer Lise Andreasen says, “I made a joke!”

(13) MIND INTO MATTER. “Vesuvius Turned a Roman Man’s Brain Into Glass. Now, Scientists Reveal How the Extremely Rare Preservation Happened” in Smithsonian Magazine.

In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the nearby ancient Roman city of Pompeii and the smaller town of Herculaneum under deadly layers of volcanic ash, pumice and pyroclastic flows. But the disaster that demolished the two settlements also immortalized them, preserving everything from the shape of victims’ bodies to frescoes in private villas and library scrolls.

Archaeologists even discovered the remains of a young man whose brain and parts of his spinal cord had turned into glass. Scientists had never seen a glassy soft tissue in nature before—and no one has found anything like it since….

…The recent study, however, supports the 2020 research claiming that the remains are indeed a brain—they found preserved neurons and axons, as well as proteins known to be common in brain tissue. They conclude the vitrification was caused by an ash cloud that arrived in Herculaneum before the pyroclastic flows from the volcano….

…But there’s a catch: “Conditions must have been very, very specific, because the organic tissue must have experienced a heating fast enough not to entirely destroy it (which is instead the most common occurrence) and then fast-cool to turn into glass,” Giordano says to Popular Science’s Andrew Paul.

To achieve those specific circumstances, the skull and spine acted as protective layers, shielding the soft tissue within from a bit of the heat. “The glass that formed as a result of such a unique process attained a perfect state of preservation of the brain and its microstructures,” the team writes in the paper.

Giordano tells Live Science’s Tom Metcalfe that they found charcoal fragments in Herculaneum that supported their idea. These fragments “experienced multiple [heating] events, and the highest temperatures were associated with the early, super-hot ash cloud.”

Benjamin Andrews, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Collin Blinder that the team’s findings are “remarkable.”

“There’s a huge story, a huge wealth of information, contained in these little particles,” he adds.

Not everyone agrees with the new conclusions, however. For example, Alexandra Morton-Hayward, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oxford in England who was also not involved in the research, is not convinced that the glassy material is indeed parts of the man’s brain. She maintains that soft tissue vitrification is “incredibly unlikely,” per CNN….

(14) LUNAR ECLIPSE VISIBLE FROM THE AMERICAS. Coming March 14: “Total lunar eclipse to mesmerise skywatchers in March” reports the Guardian.

This week, the moon experiences a total lunar eclipse, which although not as spectacular as a total solar eclipse is still a beautiful celestial sight to behold.

A total lunar eclipse occurs when the full moon passes directly behind Earth, through our planet’s shadow. Skywatchers first see the shadow of Earth creeping across the face of the moon. This is known as the partial phase.

Then, during the total phase, when the moon is engulfed by Earth’s shadow, the lunar surface turns a deep red colour. In the last phase, also known as a partial phase, Earth’s shadow slips off the lunar surface and all returns to normal.

It is a leisurely process, taking more than three hours to complete. On 14 March, the partial eclipse begins at 0509 GMT. The total phase begins at 0658 GMT before returning to a partial phase at 0731 GMT. This final partial phase then ends at 0847 GMT.

Unfortunately for European and African viewers, only the initial partial phase will be visible. Observers in North and South America, however, will be treated to the whole thing. Parts of Asia and Australia will then catch the final partial phase.

(15) FILK HISTORY. “Margaret Middleton – A Shaper of Modern Filk (Part 2 of 2), interviewed by Edie Stern” has been posted by FANAC.org on YouTube.

Title: Margaret Middleton – A Shaper of Modern Filk  (Part 2 of 2), interviewed by Edie Stern

Description: FANAC History Zoom: February 2025:  Named to the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996, and a long time officer of the Filk Foundation, Margaret Middleton has been instrumental in the shaping of modern filk, as well as a mainstay of Arkansas fandom. She’s published multiple fanzines, including Kantele, and was a founder of the first specialized filk convention, Filkcon 1.

In Part 2 of this 2 part recording, the conversation ranges from Margaret’s taxonomy of filk, to tips for busking at the Farmer’s Market, and to the effect of the internet on filking and the filk community.  We also learn about Margaret-when-she’s not filking, including her involvement in  the Civil Air Patrol, quilting and her professional responsibilities for “measuring piles of dirt and holes in the ground.” … It’s a wide-ranging conversation, and ends with barbershop quartets, the Ballad of Eskimo Nell (discussed – not sung),  the relationship of quilts to filk conventions and audience Q&A…For those interested in the history of filk, this 2 part interview is highly recommended.

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

Pixel Scroll 3/8/25 Under A Spreading Integral Tree, The Village Pixel Scrolls

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(1) LIVING WITH REVIEWS. Here is Kirk McElhearn’s advice to writers about “How to Handle Online Book Reviews Without Losing Your Mind” at Literature & Latte.

If you’ve published a book, you’ll get reviews online from readers. Some may be positive and others negative. Here’s how to approach online book reviews with a healthy mindset.

Don’t get involved

For many years, Amazon allowed customers to comment on reviews; Goodreads allows this. Don’t post comments on negative reviews; this can escalate conflicts and potentially harm your reputation. There have been some cases where authors did this, leading to hostility, review bombing, and social media backlash.

Over-attention to online reviews can be bad for an author’s mental health. Some authors see negative reviews as a sign of failure, but not everyone will like your book. Some will love it and others will hate it. Focus on the good reviews and ignore the bad ones. Many authors avoid looking at reviews altogether; this is hard, because we are curious, and we seek approval, but you could ask a friend or colleague to look at reviews for you and filter the bad from the good.

Getting feedback from reviews

As a writer, you already know that giving and receiving feedback is delicate. Most negative reviews are hostile, but you can learn from the ones in the middle, the three-star and four-star reviews. Some of these reviews can give you insights into how readers perceive your characters, dialog, world-building, or plot, and they can help you find your weaknesses and improve them for your next book.

You’ll find that most people who aren’t writing the most negative reviews do have useful things to say. They took the time to write about your book because they enjoyed it and wanted to share their thoughts with other readers. These are readers who are likely to buy your next book, so learn from their comments….

(2) STEPHEN HICKMAN ONLINE EXHIBIT. [Item by Steven H Silver.] There is a Stephen Hickman on-line exhibit running through the end of the month at Ix Gallery: “Endymion II: More Selections from the Stephen Hickman Estate”.

STEPHEN HICKMAN (1949 – 2021) illustrated science fiction and fantasy for five decades. Among other publications, his work appeared in fourteen of the nineteen SPECTRUM annuals. Two books of his work are available: The Fantasy Art of Stephen Hickman; and Empyrean, The Art of Stephen Hickman. Two sculptures of H. P. Lovecraft subjects have been issued – the first by Bowen Designs and the second direct via Kickstarter. Major exhibitions include: New Britain Museum of Art New Britain Conn. 1978; Society of Illustrators show 1987 NYC; Delaware Art Museum shows, 1986 & 88 in Newark DE; Art Space Raleigh NC 1990; Canton Museum of Art Canton OH 1991; Olympia and York 1991 & 1992 NYC; Orlando Science Center Orlando FLA 1991; Smithsonian Air and Space 2009; At The Edge: Art of the Fantastic, Allentown PA 2012. Major awards include: Hugo Award [for the Space Fantasy Stamp Museum Wash DC 1992; SPECTRUM shows Society of Illustrators NYC 2005 & Booklet US Postal Service] 1993; seven Chesley Awards [one for Artistic Excellence]; Two SPECTRUM Gold Awards. Hickman’s work has earned him critical acclaim, including a World Science Fiction Convention’s Hugo Award and six Chesley Awards from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.

(3) PERRY RHODAN ORIGINS. Cora Buhlert follows Rachel Cordasco’s history of Perry Rhodan with her insights into German fans’ experience of the series in “Fantastic Fiction: Perry Rhodan – (West) Germany’s Space Hero” at the Seattle Worldcon 2025 blog.

Science fiction has many long-running science fiction series. However, there is no series longer running than Perry Rhodan, which as of this writing has racked up a staggering 3,312 volumes since 1961….

…You can’t write about Perry Rhodan without also discussing the German Romanheft. Romanhefte (literally “novel magazines,” the plural form of Romanheft) are A5-sized fiction magazines printed on woodpulp paper with a glossy cover. Every 64-page issue contains a single short novel, a novella. Sometimes they’re serialized; sometimes they’re standalone stories….

…The first issue, “Mission Stardust,” hit West German newsstands on September 8, 1961. Set in the not too far-off future of 1971, it featured a world on the brink of nuclear war, divided among two superpowers, a western and an eastern bloc. It was a world readers in 1961 recognised only too well. The Berlin Wall had been built barely a month earlier, the specter of nuclear war was ever-present, and West Germans knew they would likely be on the frontlines….

(4) NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY. There’s one week left in New Edge Sword & Sorcery’s campaign to crowdfund its next three issues at Backerkit. These will be issues (#5, #6, and #7. Cora Buhlert will have a non-fiction piece in issue 7.

(5) WHY IT SOUNDS FAMILIAR. “Rhode Islanders rally for the Freedom to Read and against book bans at State House event” — Steve Ahlquist extensively quotes those who spoke.

…I want to center the views of two Rhode Island High School students, Sila Yang and Oscar Kunk, student organizers with ARISE (Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education).

Sila Yang:

I am currently a senior at Pilgrim High School. I remember, back in my sophomore year, I had to read a book called Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a novel that takes place in a dystopian future where books are outlawed and burned to ashes by firemen. The story’s themes explore the effects of censorship and conformity, and individuals’ struggle with self-identity and a desire for knowledge. However, the government brainwashes its citizens with the media, preventing them from learning and being open-minded. And when I looked at Trump’s Administration, I asked myself, “Where have I seen this all before?”

Censorship is a global issue. Even the freest of countries are unsafe by it. Despite being called the land of the free, we are threatened with censorship. According to the National Coalition Against Censorship, censorship prevents people from spreading ideas, opinions, and important messages. In the year 2025, the Trump Administration threatens to ban people relating to LGBTQ issues, racial history, and injustice. Not only does censorship affect writers and librarians, but it threatens the education of many students and silences marginalized communities, including myself as a Hmong American student.

I understand what it is like being hidden in the dark. The Vietnam War, let alone the Secret War of Laos, is rarely discussed, if ever, in our history classes. To have other history banned, including LGBTQ history and Black history – to have any history censored is a disgrace to history itself….

(6) DANGEROUS ISLAND. The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reviews “Atomfall, the survival game that draws from classic British sci-fi”.

The year is 1962 and you’ve just woken up in the shadow of the Windscale (now Sellafield) nuclear power station in Cumbria, five years after its catastrophic meltdown. Trapped in the sizeable quarantine zone surrounding the accident site, you must stay alive long enough to figure out how to escape – a task made rather more challenging by the presence of aggressive cultists, irradiated monsters and highly territorial terror bees. Imagine Stalker, but set in northern England, and you’re edging towards what Oxford-based developer Rebellion has in store.

Fallout may seem like another obvious inspiration for this irradiated game world, but after playing a two-hour demo, it’s clear the game draws more from classic British sci-fi. Here you are, stuck in the picturesque Lake District, with its lush woodlands, gurgling rivers and dry-stone walls. But all around you are the burned-out remains of 1960s cars and tanks, abandoned farm buildings and odd sounds and symbols that suggest something extremely sinister is happening. The development team have mentioned Dr Who, The Wicker Man the novels of John Wyndham as key inspirations, and you can see it in the grubby dislocated scene all around you. Approach a phone box and pick up the ringing handset, and you may hear a disembodied voice warning you about an apparently friendly character you met up the road. Stray into a cave and a ghost-like monster comes at you, infecting you with a paranoid mind virus. This is very much the stuff of Quatermass and Jon Pertwee-era Who….

(7) LAST OF US RETURNS. On HBO beginning April 2: “The Last of Us Season 2 Trailer: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey”. Variety describes one of the trailer’s scenes:

…“This is where we live,” Joel says to Benjamin, pointing at a map. “And what’s that?” “The fence,” Benjamin replies. “What’s inside?” Joel asks, and Benjamin replies, “People,” as shots play of Joel and Ellie playing guitar and Ellie dancing with her new friend Dina (Isabella Merced). Finally, Joel asks, “What’s outside?” and his nephew says, “Monsters,” over shots of someone wielding a scythe, W.L.F. (Washington Liberation Front) tanks and soldiers, new antagonist Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) trudging through snow, and yes, monsters. Several rows of them sprint towards the fence outside of the Jackson settlement and are kept at bay by fiery explosions before Tommy is shown fearfully firing a large gun….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 8, 1921 — Alan Hale Jr. (Died 1990.)

Let’s talk about Alan Hale Jr.

His father, Alan Hale Sr., played Little John in Robin Hood a century ago with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, reprised the role in The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, then played him once more in The Rogues of Sherwood Forest. We agreed that Robin Hood is genre, didn’t we? 

Alan Hale Jr.’s best-known role is Captain Jonas Grumby — referred to by name only in the Gilligan’s Island pilot, thereafter as The Skipper. We’ve also agreed that series is genre. He’s owner and captain of the S.S. Minnow which ends up in the genre-based lost island setting with its passengers and sole crew member.

Counting the pilot, it ran for ninety-nine episodes over three seasons starting sixty-one years ago. There would later be three television films in the late Seventies and early Eighties in color. I don’t remember any of them, do any of you remember them? 

There are two Filmation-produced animated sequel series which I’ve mercifully never seen as I’m really not keen of animated series made off live series and yes that includes the Star Trek one. They were The New Adventures of Gilligan and Gilligan’s Planet, both short lived. Hale Jr. voiced his character.

Genre appearances included The Wild Wild West where he shows up in “The Night of The Sabatini West” as department chemist/agent Brown. We also have here Jim Backus as funeral director Swanson. A Gilligan’s Island in-joke is of Brown remarking he is going on vacation on a desert island!

There’s also My Favorite Martin, Fantasy Island, ALF for television series, whereas films were The Giant Spider Invasion, The Fifth Musketeer, and well, and I didn’t see anything else but if I missed anything I’m sure I’ll hear about it. 

Alan Hale Jr.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) SMEARED CAMPAIGN. Futurism says, “Netflix Is Using AI to Upscale a 1980s Sitcom and the Results Are Borderline Horrific”.

From the very first frames, you can tell there’s something off about Netflix’s version of “A Different World,” a “Cosby Show” spin-off that aired on NBC from 1987 to 1993.

As spotted by developer and blogger Scott Hanselman, the streamer — or whatever rightsholder licensed the show to it — seriously bungled its efforts to upscale the decades-old footage, which was originally shot on film and made available on DVD since then.

The show was added earlier this month and is currently listed as being “HD.” But onscreen artifacts quickly make it clear that an algorithm is being used to increase the sharpness of pixelated frames, with sometimes comically awful results.

The intro credits already raise alarm bells, with mangled hands, misaligned facial features, bungled logos, and overall smeary lines that don’t meet up….

… Did we really need a smeared reimaging of a beloved 90s sitcom? “A Different World” is now besmirched by its association with Bill Cosby, but it was culturally important when it came out, confronting social issues like the HIV crisis in a mainstream way. It’s clearly important enough to put on Netflix; why isn’t it important enough to present viewers with a good viewing experience?…

… Text gets jumbled badly “because the AI can’t read,” Hanselman explained. “Rather than guessing the phrase or guessing the words, [the AI] just upscales that. It looks like hieroglyphics.”

“The problem is AI upscaling image technology isn’t quite there yet,” he concluded. “So what you end up with is an uncanny valley.”…

(11) IT’S NEAR BEYOND THE MOON, I KNOW BEYOND A DOUBT. “My heart will lead me there soon.” “Asteroid Mining Startup Loses Its Spacecraft Somewhere Beyond the Moon” reports Gizmodo.

A privately built spacecraft is tumbling aimlessly in deep space, with little hope of being able to contact its home planet. Odin is around 270,000 miles (434,522 kilometers) away from Earth, on a silent journey that’s going nowhere fast.

California-based startup AstroForge launched its Odin spacecraft on February 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The probe was headed toward a small asteroid to scan it for valuable metals, in service of the company’s ambitious goal of mining asteroids for profit. AstroForge was also hoping to become the first company to launch a commercial mission to deep space with its in-house spacecraft, a dream that fell apart shortly after launch.

After Odin separated from the rocket, the company’s primary ground station in Australia suffered major technical issues due to a power amplifier breaking, delaying AstroForge’s first planned attempt to contact the spacecraft, the company revealed in an update on Thursday. The mission went downhill from there, as several attempts to communicate with Odin failed and the spacecraft’s whereabouts were unknown. “I think we all know the hope is fading as we continue the mission,” AstroForge founder Matt Gialich said in a video update shared on X…

(12) SMALL BANG THEORY. Smithsonian Magazine tells readers “Oldest Known Impact Crater Discovered in Australia”.

Researchers have discovered the oldest meteorite impact crater known to science in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The feature is more than one billion years older than the previous first-place contender, and could hold important implications for understanding the origin of life on our planet. The discovery is detailed in a study published Thursday in Nature Communications.

“Before our discovery, the oldest impact crater was 2.2 billion years old, so this is by far the oldest known crater ever found on Earth,” Curtin University’s Tim Johnson, a geologist and co-author of the study, says in a statement. The team dated the crater to 3.5 billion years ago.

Curiously, the discovery of the world’s oldest meteorite impact crater actually began with a question about Earth: how did the first continents—our planet’s oldest rocks—form more than three billion years ago? While many theories involve geological processes powered by heat from Earth’s core, Johnson and his colleagues have previously argued that the formation of Pilbara would have required extraterrestrial energy.

They suggest that large meteorite collisions could have caused Earth’s mantle to form “blobs” of volcanic material that over time became continental crust. To make a compelling case, however, they had to find evidence of a meteor impact that corresponded with that timeline—which is exactly what they did.

“The crater was exactly where we had hoped it would be,” Johnson and some of his co-authors wrote in an article in the Conversation. But the team didn’t find a giant crater basin—after all, 3.5 billion years is plenty of time for erosion to do its thing. Instead, they found the next best option: a rock formation known as shatter cones, in an area of the Pilbara region called the North Pole Dome.

“They’re these beautiful, delicate little structures that look a little bit like an inverted badminton shuttle cock with the top knocked off,” Johnson explains to ABC’s Peter de Kruijff. “So, upward facing cones with delicate feathery-like features. The only way you can form those in natural rocks is from a large meteorite impact.”…

(13) IS MARS HELL? [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] ScienceAlert finds “Curiosity Cracked Open a Rock on Mars And Discovered a Big Surprise”.

A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior.

When the rover rolled its 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) body over the rock in May last year, the rock broke open, revealing yellow crystals of elemental sulfur: brimstone.

Although sulfates are fairly common on Mars, this represents the first time sulfur has been found on the red planet in its pure elemental form.

What’s even more exciting is that the Gediz Vallis Channel, where Curiosity found the rock, is littered with rocks that look suspiciously similar to the sulfur rock before it got fortuitously crushed – suggesting that, somehow, elemental sulfur may be abundant there in some places….

(14) COZY CAT TV. NHK World-Japan hosts a series titled A Cat’s-Eye View of Japan. Watch episodes at their website. One is titled, “Ibaraki: Cats in a Surfer’s Paradise”. Is there anything of genre interest here? I don’t know. You’d better check closely….

A cat hangs out with her owners, a family of surfers who run a beach café. This cool cat gets along with her family’s dog, too! Next, we meet a shy cat at a surfboard and skateboard shop.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Open Culture reminds us where we can “Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award”.

Victoria Warmerdam, the writer and director of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” summarizes the plot of her 22-minute film as follows: The film “tells the story of Lara, a music producer who spirals into an existential crisis after repeatedly failing a CAPTCHA test—leading her to question whether she might actually be a robot. Through a dark comedic lens, [the film] explores themes of identity, self-determination, love, and technology in a world where the line between humanity and artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly blurred.”…

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

Pixel Scroll 3/4/25 I’ve Grown Accustomed To Their Scroll

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(1) GAIMAN MOVES FOR DISMISSAL. Neil Gaiman’s attorney’s today filed a motion in US federal court in Wisconsin to dismiss the sexual assault and trafficking complaint recently brought by former live-in nanny Scarlett Pavlovich. The Wrap has the story: “Neil Gaiman Says Texts With Rape Accuser Show ‘Enthusiastic,’ Consensual Relationship: ‘She Is a Fantasist’”.

Neil Gaiman answered sexual assault and trafficking allegations made by former live-in nanny Scarlett Pavlovich on Tuesday, filing a motion for dismissal that included text messages he says show they engaged in an “enthusiastic” and consensual sexual relationship.

“None of Pavlovich’s claims are true,” Gaiman wrote in the motion filed in a Wisconsin federal court. “She is a fantasist who has fabricated a tale of abuse against me and Ms. Palmer.”

Gaiman provided screenshots from a number of WhatsApp messages in hopes of furthering his point. The first was from February 2022 – shortly after the pair’s first interaction in a bathtub in New Zealand.

“Thank you for a lovely lovely night – wow x,” Pavlovich said.

She followed up a couple days later saying, ““Let me know If you want me to run a bath… I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry.”

Pavlovich filed a complaint against Gaiman and Amanda Palmer on Feb. 3, accusing his now-estranged wife of “procuring and presenting Plaintiff to Gaiman for such abuse,” including physical harm, emotional distress and disturbing non-consensual sex acts, pushing her to become suicidal.

“The Defendants knowingly recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, and/or obtained Scarlett for labor or services while knowing she would be forced to engage in sexual acts as a condition of receiving the pay and housing they promised her,” the suit stated. Pavlovich “endured those acts because she would lose her job, housing, and promised future career support if she did not.”

Gaiman’s filing Tuesday also included messages where he initially confronted Pavlovich about her rape accusations and plans to “MeToo” him.

“Oh my God. Neil! I never said that,” she wrote. “But I’m horrified by your message – me too you? Rape? WHAT? This is the first I have heard of this. Wow. I need a moment to digest your message… I have never used the word rape, I’m just so shocked, I honestly don’t know what to say.”

Later texts show Gaiman expressing concern he was being painted as a “monster” when he assumed their relationship was consenting. Pavlovich’s responses seemed to provide reassurances she thought the same.

“This is beyond out of control and as I said I only have fondness and kindness for you,” she wrote. “It was consensual – how many times do I have to f–king tell everyone.”

Five women initially accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct as part of the podcast series “Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman.” Four more women later shared their experiences with with New York Magazine…

Deadline’s story adds that everything claimed to have happened occurred in New Zealand and argues therefore a US court lacks jurisdiction over the complaint. “Neil Gaiman Says Texts Prove Rape Claims Are ’False’”.

…“In no uncertain terms, Pavlovich’s accusations are false,” a brief in support of motion to dismiss filed Tuesday in federal court in Wisconsin proclaims in language similar to blog post reactions he issued to such allegations last year. “The sexual scenarios she describes deliberately in graphic detail are invented. Any sexual conduct that occurred was in all ways consensual. Law enforcement authorities in New Zealand thoroughly investigated the same claims Plaintiff makes here, found no merit, and declined to file any charges against Gaiman. There was no credible evidence of wrongdoing.”

…“No matter what Plaintiff says happened, it all happened in New Zealand between a New Zealand citizen and a New Zealand permanent resident,” the brief asserts. “There is no  legal authority to adjudicate her lawsuit in federal court in Wisconsin, or in other federal courts around the United States,” the filing adds, with a declaration from Gaiman listing over a dozen people in NZ and the USA who will back his version of events. “Pavlovich’s claims are false, but there is no dispute that all of the conduct alleged in the Complaint occurred in New Zealand, the proper forum, if any, for this lawsuit.”…

(2) BALATRO HIT A BIG BUMP IN THE ROAD. The Guardian presents a case study about what happens “When video game age ratings go wrong”.

Over the last few months, the makers of a popular card game have been wrestling with the byzantine process that surrounds video game age classifications. Age ratings are intended to help parents determine whether or not a game is appropriate for their children. But in practice, an erroneous label doesn’t just mislead consumers – it can be the difference between success or failure.

Balatro is an award-winning poker game made by an anonymous game developer known as LocalThunk, in which the only guiding principle is chaos. In each match the player must divine the best possible poker hand out of a randomised draw, but the conditions fluctuate constantly. In one round, the game might prevent you from using an entire suit or junk all your face cards, while the next round might challenge you to achieve an eyebrow-raising score with only a single hand. As the game progresses, players accrue jokers for their deck that add yet more wild rules.

It’s an ingenious premise that has allowed a game that began as a small side-project to sell millions of copies since its release in February 2024. Though players win in-game money to buy new cards between rounds, Balatro’s version of poker is fictional, and only bears a faint resemblance to the classic card game. Yet shortly after launching, Balatro hit a snag: it was classified as a gambling game.

At first, Balatro went on sale with a classification that deemed it appropriate for audiences ages three and up. But then, the classification was revised to an adults-only 18 rating. The reasoning? The Pan-European Game Information (Pegi), the organisation that determines age classifications, claimed that Balatro “contains prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling”.

Without warning, Balatro was pulled from sale on some digital storefronts in Europe and Asia.

“This was obviously a crucial moment and we had two options,” says Wout van Halderen, the communications director at PlayStack, Balatro’s publisher. “Be de-listed, or take the 18+ rating and get back in the store Asap. We opted for the second and started preparing an appeal to have the rating changed.”

The appeal was initially declined – and issues began to snowball. In Korea, the rating outright barred Balatro from being sold. In December, when Balatro won Game of the Year at The Game awards, the team was also ramping up for a physical release. Another appeal was filed by that version’s distributor, Fireshine. It is only now, a year later and after a handful of updates, that the dust has settled and Balatro has been bumped down to a 12+ rating by Pegi.

… Pegi, for its part, reiterated that it seeks to apply a fair criteria for ratings in a press release, and that any game that teaches or glamorises gambling will automatically lead to an 18+ rating. The board that oversaw the appeal also ceded that Pegi is a system that “continuously evolves in line with cultural expectations and the guidance of independent experts who support our assessment process”. To that end, Balatro’s dilemma has led Pegi to create a more granular classification system for games that depict gambling. The 18+ rating will now only apply to games that simulate the type of poker people play at actual casinos….

(3) THREE NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASES OUT IN MARCH. The SFWA anthology team, led by Editor Stephen Kotowych, will have three more Nebula Awards Showcase editions ready for launch on Tuesday, March 25.

Nebula Awards Showcases 57, 58, and 59 span work published in 2021, 2022, and 2023, which then became celebrated as Nebula-finalist and award-winning materials in 2022, 2023, and 2024. The prestigious Nebula Awards anthology series has published reprints of winning and nominated works annually since 1966, as voted on by SFWA members, and we’re deeply thankful to return to that strong tradition this year. It is a great privilege to celebrate the work of these authors, and we hope you’ll join us in honoring their achievement when these volumes launch as one.

Going forward, our new workflow will also allow us to celebrate Nebula Awards Showcase 60 at this year’s Nebula Awards in Kansas City, Missouri.

(4) MORE MAGAZINE HISTORY. [Item by Steven French.] There’s a strong dose of nostalgia here! “Typewriters, stinky carpets and crazy press trips: what it was like working on video game mags in the 1980s” – the Guardian’s Keith Stuart remembers.

In the summer of 1985, I made the long pilgrimage from my home in Cheadle Hulme to London’s glamorous Hammersmith Novotel for the Commodore computer show. As a 14-year-old gamer, this was a chance to play the latest titles and see some cool new joysticks, but I was also desperate to visit one particular exhibitor: the publisher Newsfield, home of the wildly popular games mags Crash and Zzap!64. By the time I arrived there was already a long queue of kids at the small stand and most of them were waiting to have their show programmes signed by reigning arcade game champion and Zzap reviewer, Julian Rignall. As an ardent subscriber, I can still remember the thrill of standing in that line, the latest copy of the mag clutched in my sweaty hands. I wouldn’t feel this starstruck again until I met Sigourney Weaver a quarter of a century later.

It turns out I’m not the only one who remembers that day. In his wonderful new book, The Games of a Lifetime, Rignall himself recalls the shock of being swamped by fans. “We just didn’t expect anything like that,” he writes. “I had no idea readers would be so interested in us. But I loved it.”

I’m not sure he should have been so surprised, though. Back in the mid-80s, the boom era of the C64 and ZX Spectrum home computers, magazines such as Crash, Zzap and Computer & Video Games were the only sources of news and opinion about new games. At the time, information about game developers was scarce, so magazine reviewers, with their photos plastered in every issue, were the stars of the industry, the social media influencers of the era….

(5) IS REMORSE A DESIRABLE GAME FEATURE? The New York Times discusses a video game where players are “Slaying Monsters With Swords and Sympathy”. (Behind a paywall.)

Gigantic reptiles are lounging on warm rocks as yellow grass sways in a gentle breeze.

You may be a monster hunter, feller of beasts with a razor-sharp sword, yet a companion has encouraged you to first stop and observe this flora and fauna. Press a button to gaze intensely at these lustrous creatures, learning that it is a gaggle of females gathered around a spiked, larger male. As the camera zooms in, tiny critters scuttle past your feet toward their next meal, a carcass in the distance.

The majestic scale and teeming ecological detail in Monster Hunter Wilds can make it feel as if you are playing a fantastical version of a David Attenborough documentary.

But there is no ignoring the title of this celebrated Japanese series: These are foremost monster-slaying games that have cultivated bloodlust for more than 20 years. The franchise’s inherent tension is that the allure of battling prehistoric behemoths and exploring their detailed, entwined habitats leaves a sour aftertaste when you are carving up the remaining cadavers for loot.

“There is a bizarre feeling at the center of Monster Hunter,” said Jacob Geller, a critic and YouTube video game essayist. “Unlike most other video games, it’s made pretty clear that the creatures you’re killing are not evil, and so it does feel undeniably bad hunting them.”

More than any other entry in the series, Monster Hunter Wilds, which was released for the PC, PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S on Friday, reckons with the interplay between the exceptional beauty of these animals, the ecosystems they are part of, and the player’s core task of dispatching them….

(6) FIRST BRUSH WITH FAME. Artist Michael Whelan’s autobiographical post takes us back to his professional beginnings: “1976: Year in Review (Part One)”

Staking everything on a letter from Donald Wollheim, bolstered by recent success selling his work at conventions, Michael packed his VW Beetle and with trailer in tow headed to New York City to pursue illustration in 1975.

His parents may not have been happy about his career choice, but by that time they lived in New Jersey, and he was able to stay with them for a short time while he scoured bookstores, studying science fiction and fantasy book covers. He spent 18 hours a day polishing a portfolio that he felt compared favorably to what he saw on the shelves.

His first professional sale was to Marvel Comics, who bought pieces right out of his portfolio and hired him for more cover work. Like many young New York area artists, Michael worked out of Neal Adams Studio. That was only a brief stop as the fast turnaround and revolving deadlines of comics didn’t appeal to him.

Fortunately Donald Wollheim came through on his offer and gave Michael his first book cover assignment. Regular work with DAW Books would follow.

At the same time, Neal Adams kindly arranged an interview with Ace Books, who also hired Michael to do cover work. With a second client secured, Michael was never without an assignment after that….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Robert Bloch’s “That Hell-Bound Train”

So let’s talk about Robert Bloch’s “That Hell-Bound Train” which many decades after reading it remains my favorite piece of fiction by him. I read it at least once a year.

It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in September of 1958. That issue also has the second part of three of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit – Will Travel (and which is the story shown on the cover). 

I’d stick a spoiler alert in here but surely every Filer here knows the story of Martin, a hobo, who one dark night has a large black train pulls up beside him. The conductor says Martin can have anything he wants in exchange for which he will ride that “Hell-Bound Train” when he dies. He hands Martin a watch which he tells him will stop time when Martin reaches he perceives to be the absolute perfect moment in his life.  

Y’all know what that moment turns out to be… 

It would win the Hugo Award at Detention in a field of other nominees which was rather large as here they are with nominated works: They’ve Been Working On …” by Anton Lee Baker, “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” by Alfred Bester, “Triggerman” by J. F. Bone, “The Edge of the Sea” by Algis Budrys, “The Advent on Channel Twelve” by C. M. Kornbluth, “Theory of Rocketry” by C. M. Kornbluth, “Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee” by Fritz Leiber, “Space to Swing a Cat” by Stanley Mullen and “Nine Yards of Other Cloth” by Manly Wade Wellman. 

What an amazing selection of reading that is! The only author that I do not recognize is Stanley Mullen. For the purpose of this piece I am not going to look him up on ISFDB and instead I’m going to ask y’all to tell me about him.

I love every word of the story from what Martin does with his life until he finally stops time, it is truly an extraordinary story. Yes.

William Tenn says in Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, volume 1, that he helped shape the story while at the magazine as it was “an absolutely fine piece of work that just didn’t have a usable ending”.  He had come to the magazine after Boucher retired. 

I know there’s at least three audio versions that have been done, so it’s possible that one might actually does this story justice, but I wouldn’t know as so far I’ve not tracked any of them down. Anyone heard any of them? 

Now to my surprise, though I should not have been as it is great source material for one, it became an opera staged in (at least) workshop form at the University of Texas.

It’s available from the usual suspects in Tim Pratt’s excellent anthology Sympathy for the Devil. It was included a number of times in another anthologies before that, but that’s near as I can tell the only one in print right now, either from the usual suspects or in the old-fashioned paper version.

I wondering did anyone wrote a filk off of it? 

So here’s the first words to savor… 

When Martin was a little boy, his daddy was a Railroad Man. Daddy never rode the high iron, but he walked the tracks for the CB&Q, and he was proud of his job. And every night when he got drunk, he sang this old song about That Hell-Bound Train.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Carpe Diem evolves technologically.
  • Cornered has the latest in overseers.
  • Dinosaur Comics chronicles the artificial sweetening of language.
  • Tom Gauld is a fan of danger.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com #science #mathematics

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T11:16:31.251Z
  • Tom Gauld also brings us an example of the repression inherent in the system.

A cartoon for #worldbookday (coming on Thursday 6th) for this week’s @theguardian.com books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T10:28:08.408Z

(9) DISNEY ANIMATION BAILS ON LONGFORM STREAMING CONTENT. “Disney Cancels ‘Tiana’ Animated Series and Jumps Ship on Longform Streaming Toons” reports Animation Magazine.

The Walt Disney Animation Studios are no longer cooking up longform streaming content, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The first title to be culled from the lineup is Tiana, the Disney+ series based on the 2009 movie The Princess and the Frog, which introduce the studio’s first Black Disney Princess.

A source revealed that WDAS was also shelving an unannounced feature project destined for Disney+, and confirmed that there will be layoffs at Disney’s Vancouver animation studio. This shift follows Pixar’s announcement last year that it will not be prioritizing longform episodic content after launching the Inside Out spinoff Dream Productions and recent original Win or Lose on Disney+

A short-form special set in the world of The Princess and the Frog is reportedly still in development. Tiana‘s Joyce Sherrí (staff writer on Midnight Mass) and Steven Anderson will be directing….

(10) HERZOG LAUNCHES ANIMATION FEATURE PROJECT. “Werner Herzog Announces First Animated Feature ‘The Twilight World’ with Psyop & Sun Creature” – Animation Magazine has the story.

The acclaimed German writer, producer and filmmaker, Werner Herzog, behind celebrated work such as Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath of God, announces his first animated film, The Twilight World. Herzog will direct the narrative feature, with animation and production support from renowned animation studio, Psyop, in partnership with Sun Creature Studio, producers of the Bafta- and triple Oscar-nominated film, Flee.

Sun Creature will also be providing animation services for the film out of its Bordeaux-based studio, and has brokered discussions with several potential French animation directors to collaborate with Herzog on the project.

Adapted from Herzog’s best selling novel of the same name, The Twilight World tells the true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer who refused to believe that World War II was over, and continued to fight a personal, fictitious war in the jungles of the Philippines for 30 years. Part fictionalized history, part war drama and part dream log, the film is a meditation on the nature of reality, the illusion of time, and the conflict between the external world and our inner lives.

Herzog worked closely with writers Michael Arias (Tekkonkinkreet, The Animatrix) and Luca Vitale on the screenplay adaptation of the book. He will also narrate the film…

(11) HAIR APPARENT. “Scientists aiming to bring back woolly mammoth create woolly mice” reports the Guardian.

A plan to revive the mammoth is on track, scientists have said after creating a new species: the woolly mouse.

Scientists at the US biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences plan to “de-extinct” the prehistoric pachyderms by genetically modifying Asian elephants to give them woolly mammoth traits. They hope the first calf will be born by the end of 2028.

Ben Lamm, co-founder and chief executive of Colossal, said the team had been studying ancient mammoth genomes and comparing them with those of Asian elephants to understand how they differ and had already begun genome-editing cells of the latter.

Now the team say they have fresh support for their approach after creating healthy, genetically modified mice that have traits geared towards cold tolerance, including woolly hair. “It does not accelerate anything but it’s a massive validating point,” Lamm said….

(12) MR. SCI-FI ON SF FILMS. Marc Scott Zicree – Mr. Sci-Fi – brings us “Mr. Sci-Fi’s History of Science Fiction Films — The 2000s Part One!” No film clips – it’s entirely a talking head presentation.

(13) SF WORLD. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Are we Living In a Science Fiction World?” the question Moid asks over at Media Death Cult…

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

Pixel Scroll 2/26/25 Do Pixels Dream Of Scrolls That Will Be?

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(1) THREE MAJOR PROZINES CHANGE OWNERSHIP. Jason Sanford today reported “Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF purchased by new owner” on Patreon.

…The new owner of the magazines is Steven Salpeter and a group of investors. Salpeter is the president of literary and IP development at Assemble Media and previously worked as a literary agent for Curtis Brown.….

(2) ASTOUNDING AWARD’S FUTURE? Following the report that Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF have been purchased by a new owner, John Scalzi speculated about the fate of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Although voting is administered by the Worldcon, the Astounding Award belongs to Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog prior to this sale. Will Analog’s new owners continue the sponsorship? John Scalzi volunteered a landing place if one is needed in a post at Whatever:

 If the new owners of Asimov’s and Analog don’t want to take sponsorship of the Astounding Award (or the award is not otherwise folded into the responsibilities of WSFS/the individual Worldcons), we’ll take it on. The ideal plan would be for the Scalzi Family Foundation to act as a bridge sponsor while we set up an endowment that would allow the Astounding Award to be run indefinitely.

(3) EISNER HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES. Comic-Con International has announced 21 creators and industry figures who will be inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year.

In addition to these choices, voters in the comics industry will elect 6 persons from a group of 18 nominees proposed by the judges. Those nominees will be announced within the next week, and a ballot will be made available for online voting. 

(4) BEST ECOFICTION OF THE YEAR. Violet Lichen imprint editor-in-chief, Marissa van Uden has extended the call for submissions deadline for ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction. She’s seeking reprint submissions from editors, publishers, and authors.

We’ve received more than 150 stories nominated by publishers, editors, and authors so far, and the range of stories, ideas, and perspectives has been so wonderful to read. As this is our first year of the anthology and our launch happened so quickly, we’ve decided to extend the submissions window out to Monday, March 17, to ensure that everyone publishing ecofiction gets a chance to submit….

…Ecofiction engages with some of the most urgent issues facing us today and also looks ahead to the possibilities of the future. Even when dealing with dark or tragic themes, ecofiction stories are expressions of our human connection to the most beautiful planet we know, and to all of earthlife….

(5) BOOK WITHIN A BOOK. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 working weekday Women’s Hour had a second half (35 minutes in) largely devoted to two SF works.  The first was a play, a re-imagining of the Greek tragedy Oedipus but set in a dystopic, near-future, climate drought-ridden future…

And then the Nigerian-American SF author Nnedi Okorafor who was discussing her latest book Death of the Author (out from Gollancz). This is a sweeping story about a writer of a science fiction novel that becomes a global phenomenon… at a price. The future of storytelling is here. A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written. This is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it… This interview begins 50 minutes in.

Nigerian American science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor’s new book is Death of the Author. It follows the story of Zelu, a novelist who is disabled, unemployed and from a very judgmental family. Nnedi and Nuala talk about the book within her book, success, and the influence on her writing of being an athlete in her earlier years.

You can access the programme here.

(6) SANS AI. “James Cameron will reportedly open Avatar 3 with a title card saying no generative AI was used to make the movie” reports GamesRadar+.

James Cameron has reportedly revealed an anti-AI title card will open up Avatar 3, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. The Oscar-winning director shared the news in a Q&A session in New Zealand attended by Twitter user Josh Harding.

Sharing a picture of Cameron at the event, they wrote: “Such an *incredible* talk. Also, James Cameron revealed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin with a title card after the 20th Century and Lightstorm logos that ‘no generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie’.”Cameron has been vocal in the past about his feelings on artificial intelligence, speaking to CTV news in 2023 about AI-written scripts. “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it,” he told the publication. “I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”…

(7) IMAGINARY PAPERS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination has published the latest issue of Imaginary Papers, its quarterly newsletter on science fiction worldbuilding, futures thinking, and imagination.

In this issue, Sarah M. Ruiz writes about climate action, allegory, and solidarity in the 2024 film Flow; Libia Brenda writes about Crononauta, the quasi-mythical, short-lived 1964 magazine founded by Alejandro Jodorowsky and René Rebetez; and Rachael Kuintzle reports on a workshop on energy futures hosted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2024.

(8) DARK DELICACIES TO CLOSE. SFGate is there when “After 30 years, California’s prince of horror hangs up his jacket”.

On April 5, a beacon for California horror fans will be snuffed out when legacy Los Angeles shop Dark Delicacies closes its doors. “We’ve been open for 30 years, and I could have happily died right here,” laughs co-owner Del Howison, “but my wife Sue wanted to have a life — whatever that is.”

Dark Delicacies is more than just a Southern California storefront selling ghoulish souvenirs. It’s been a destination for film buffs, horror genre diehards and celebrities from across the macabre spectrum for decades, and Howison himself has become a cult attraction for those with a love of Southern California’s darker corners.

The longtime horror curator plans to stay busy until the end. On a recent weekday, Howison is moving about his Burbank shop, taking pictures of vintage Spanish and Italian movie posters to sell online. He occasionally breaks to gesture at the Tiki mugs, shot glasses, board games, playing cards and action figures on the shelves. “We stopped calling them dolls, as guys didn’t like saying they were collecting dolls,” Howison says of his early days in business. “Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a horror convention.”…

(9) UK PAPERS PROTEST AI LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A first this side of the Pond. Irrespective of their political leanings, all the papers came together on Tuesday in a campaign to stop British government proposals (yes, we have daft politicians over here just as you do in the US) to allow artificial intelligence (AI) free access to intellectual property so that it can be trained.  This is something that authors have been worried about. “UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans” in the Wandsworth Times.

Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.

The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work.

In response, publishers have launched the Make It Fair campaign, which saw newspapers put covers on the outside of their front page – criticising the Government’s consultation – organised by the News Media Association (NMA), and backed by the Society of Editors (SOE).

The message said: “The Government wants to change the UK’s laws to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment. Let’s protect the creative industries – it’s only fair.”…

(10) SF AUTHOR ISHIGURO IS ALSO AGAINST IT. The Bookseller reports “Kazuo Ishiguro urges government to ‘reconsider’ AI ‘opt-out’ plan: ‘No-one believes it will work’”. (Behind a paywall.)

…In a statement shared with the Times, the Klara and the Sun (Faber) author said the country had reached a “fork-in-the-road” moment. “If someone wants to take a book I’ve written and turn it into a TV series, or to print a chapter of it in an anthology, the law clearly states they must first get my permission and pay me,” he said.

“To do otherwise is theft. So why is our government now pushing forward legislation to make the richest, most dominant tech companies in the world exceptions? At the dawn of the AI age, why is it just and fair – why is it sensible — to alter our time-honoured copyright laws to advantage mammoth corporations at the expense of individual writers, musicians, film-makers and artists?”

Ishiguro continued that “no one believes the proposed ‘opt-out’ system will work”, saying this is why “those lobbying on behalf of the tech giants favour it”….

(11) MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG (1985-2025). Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, known especially to fans for playing Dawn Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at the age of 39. According to the Guardian:

…Police sources confirmed her death to both ABC News and the New York Post. There is no cause of death yet known, with police saying on Thursday that the New York Medical Examiner is investigating but no foul play was suspected. She had recently undergone a liver transplant, according to sources….

A successful child actress, her first lead film role was in the comedy adventure Harriet the Spy (1996). Trachtenberg followed the film with a role in Inspector Gadget next to Matthew Broderick. Her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer came in 2000 and continued til the show ended three years later. 

Trachtenberg continued to have an active career after that in non-genre productions.

(12) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Award-Winning Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite writers of horror and mysteries, has won two Lord Ruthven Awards given by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, a group of scholars specializing in vampire literature who are affiliated with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. 

(This piece is about her fantasies and mysteries that I’m familiar with. I know she wrote some SF, do comment upon it if so inclined.)

Those Who Hunt in The Night, the first in her excellent John Asher series, won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel. I think the series, eight long, might be concluded, as the last came out six years ago.

I’m also very impressed of her two novelizations done for one of my favorite TV series, Beauty and the Beast and and Beauty and the Beast: Song of Orpheus as it’s hard to write material off those series that’s worth reading.  I’ve read others which very quickly got really mawkish as they overly focus on the relationship, in my opinion of course, of the relationship of Catherine and Vincent to the exclusion of what could a fleshing out of that world. Not her. Wonderful novels! 

I’ve not tracked down her three Sherlock Holmes short story pastiches yet.

I listened to Bride of the Rat God, which is the only supernatural fantasy in theSilver Screen historical mystery series, and the next book which was not a fantasy, Scandal in Babylon. There are two more in the series so far. They likewise are not fantasy according to her.

And yes, there’s lots about her writing career I’ve not included here so feel free to tell me what you think I should have mentioned. If anybody has read her Abigail Adams or Benjamin January mystery series, I’d be interested in knowing what you think.

Barbara Hambly

(13) COMICS SECTION.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T15:48:26.139Z

(14) GOING DARK. Publishers Weekly reports that “Dark Horse Digital Has Shut Down”.

Dark Horse Media has officially shut down Dark Horse Digital as of February 24, 2025, with comics no longer available for purchase on the platform. Online access to the DHD website, however, will still be available at least through this summer, and users can continue to log in and read the comics in their bookshelves.

Effective March 31, 2025, the Dark Horse Comics and Plants vs. Zombies Comics apps for iOS will also no longer be supported.

The move follows downsizing at Dark Horse Media earlier this month, and bookends DHD’s 14-year run.

(15) LOST MARVELS FACTS FOUND. “Fantagraphics Drops Out Of Free Comic Book Day, Pulls ‘Lost Marvels’” – Bleeding Cool has corrected details. With Diamond Comic Distributors having filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, things are up in the air.

Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics gets in touch to correct me. He says “Contrary to what you wrote, the comics were actually not printed yet. If they had been, we would have proceeded as planned. But since they weren’t, and given the uncertainty of whether Diamond will even exist come May (or be able to pay us for them), we made the difficult decision to pull the plug while we could. We may still produce the comic this year, bypassing FCBD. Things are, as you can probably understand, a bit fluid these days… The decision was made entirely based on the uncertainty of FCBD and had nothing to do with the Lost Marvels book series itself, which is otherwise proceeding as planned!”

(16) GANG AGLEY. The Guardian’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter wonders: “Netflix’s games were once its best-kept secret – where did it all go wrong?”.

When Netflix first started adding video games to its huge catalogue of streaming TV shows and films, it did so quietly. In 2021, after releasing an impressive experiment with the idea of interactive film in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in 2018 and a free Stranger Things game in 2019, Netflix began expanding more fully into interactive entertainment.

The streamer’s gaming offering, for a long time, was its best-kept secret. Whoever was running it really had an eye for quality: award-winningly brilliant and relatively little-known indie games comprised the majority of its catalogue, alongside decent licensed games based on everything from The Queen’s Gambit to the reality dating show Too Hot to Handle. Subscribers could play games such as Before Your Eyes, a brief and touching story about a life cut short; Spiritfarer, about guiding lost souls to rest and Into the Breach, a superb sci-fi strategy game with robots v aliens. The company bought or invested in several game studios known for making critically acclaimed work, including London-based Ustwo games (which was behind Monument Valley). It also established a studio in California to work on blockbuster games, staffed by veteran developers.

But it seems things are changing. That blockbuster studio has been closed, as first reported by Game File, before it could ever release a game. Its latest tie-in game, Squid Game Unleashed, absolutely sucks – it’s constructed around the celebration of slapstick violence, making it a terrible fit for a satirically violent show about capitalist exploitation. Funding a bunch of indie darlings and hiring big-name talent from the likes of Blizzard and Bungie for its game studio gave the impression that Netflix really was keen on becoming a part of the gaming industry, and doing it properly. Now that is very much in question.

The company has made layoffs across its gaming divisions, including at Night Studio – makers of weird-fiction supernatural teen horror series Oxenfree. It has cancelled plans for several forthcoming games that were due to join the service, including indie hits Thirsty Suitors and Don’t Starve Together, and promising-looking hobbit game Tales of the Shire. What’s going on?

(17) GWENDDYDD. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Did you know Merlin had a sister? I didn’t… and I know more about the Matter of Britain than all but about 30 people in the US. “Early poems about Merlin portray him as environmentalist, say scholars” in the Guardian.

He is probably most often thought of today as a wizard, a shape-shifter or a mentor to the young King Arthur.

But a detailed re-examination of Myrddin – Merlin – by Welsh scholars suggests he can also be considered an early British environmentalist deeply worried about human interaction with the natural world…

… The researchers have been combing through manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and also in the 15th-century Red Book of Hergest at Jesus College, Oxford.

They also discovered more about the importance of Merlin’s sister, Gwenddydd. Callander said: “Gwenddydd is a really important figure in Welsh Merlin poetry. She supports Merlin and also appears to be a prophet in her own right.

“We found hundreds of lines of poetry in her voice in dialogue with her brother. Merlin describes her as ‘fair Gwenddydd, summit of dignity’ and ‘refuge of songs’. One of the important aspects of the project is to throw light on this lost female voice from medieval Wales.”

Callander said it was surprising that early Merlin poems had been largely neglected. “These Welsh-language texts had not been edited or translated in full, meaning much material has been missed out.”…

(18) TIME TO VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE GIANTS. “Akiva Goldsman To Reimagine 3 Classic Irwin Allen Sci-Fi Titles For TV” – Deadline has the story.

 Akiva Goldsman is developing a new Universe at Legendary Television featuring three reimagined Irwin Allen sci-fi TV series. The Oscar-winning writer, producer and director will draw inspiration for the new TV shows from Allen’s catalog and focus on revitalizing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel.

… Legendary Television is focused on the three titles above and not Allen’s second TV series Lost in Space, which aired from 1965-68 on CBS and was reimagined by Legendary TV for a 2018-21 series on Netflix. 20th Century Fox produced all four of the original shows….

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

Pixel Scroll 2/25/25 General Systems Vehicle Strange Women Lying About In Ponds Distributing Swords Is No Basis For A System Of Government

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(1) IAIN M. BANKS TV ADAPTATION. “’Consider Phlebas’ Series Set At Amazon From Charles Yu & Chloé Zhao” reports Deadline.

 Amazon MGM Studios is developing science fiction TV series Consider Phlebas. It is an adaptation of the novel by Iain M Banks, the first in the late Scottish author’s classic 10-book Culture book series about an interstellar post-scarcity society.

Interior Chinatown creator Charles Yu is writing and executive producing. The potential series also is executive produced by Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao through her production company Books of Shadows, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner for Plan B Entertainment as well as Adele Banks.

In Consider Phlebas, while war rages between the utopian Culture and the Idiran Empire, a Culture Ship AI “Mind” takes refuge on a forbidden planet. Both Horza, a shape-shifting mercenary working for the Idirans, and Balveda, a “Special Circumstances” Culture agent, have been tasked with retrieving it to tip the balance in a galaxy-spanning conflict. Consider Phlebas pits sentience against AI in an epic and bloody quest across the cosmos….

(2) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 20 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast, “The Barry Smith Comic Book Which Caused Me to Disobey My Parents”, has all the burning bridges that have fallen after him….

In my latest look back at the comics field of the ’70s, I share about the home away from home Phil Seuling built for fandom which earned his recent much-deserved accolade, whether the Ethics columns I wrote for The Comics Journal during the ’80s burned any bridges (and if I even cared those bridges were on fire), the kung fu comic book series I’d completely forgotten I’d pitched to Marvel, why my job in the Bullpen stunned writer/editor/artist Bob Budiansky, the Barry Smith Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic which caused me to disobey my parents, my initial fears I might not last long enough at Marvel to be eligible to receive unemployment benefits if I were fired, and much more.

The whole series can be downloaded from a variety of platforms at this link.

The issue of Nick Fury I wasn’t supposed to buy.

(3) GALLIFREY ONE WINDING DOWN. LA’s legendary Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One will end its run in 2028. But another LA event in the same spirit will keep the torch burning into the future. “Gallifrey One To Conclude in 2028… But The Moment Has Been Prepared For” writes Shaun Lyon.

It was with a heavy heart that we announced on February 16, 2025, at the end of this year’s convention Closing Ceremonies, that Gallifrey One will be coming to an end in 2028, after three more events over the next three years.  Our February 2028 convention will conclude an unprecedented, sometimes inexplicable and definitely historic 38-year run as the world’s largest and longest-running annual Doctor Who fan event….

…Those of us who have been on this journey for decades have earned the right to go out on our own terms. We aren’t interested in passing along our name or reputation to someone else, someone untested, who might squander the good will we engendered in the fan community. We don’t ever want Gallifrey One to be remembered as the convention that didn’t know when to quit, or is looked back upon with regret: it was great, until it wasn’t.

Most importantly, we want it to be a testament to all the people who brought it forward, from the launch in January 1989 to our first convention in May 1990, through decades of memories and connections (and even a year without one, thank you COVID) until today, when it’s the destination so many people look forward to. So many friendships have come about through the convention.  People have met and married through Gallifrey One; babies have grown up with their families attending.  And along the way, we’ve also lost so many friends through the passage of time; friends gone, but never forgotten.

We also gave our fandom three years’ notice. We didn’t want to spring this on all of you at the last minute. Many of our former attendees we know would love to come back again before we’re done. Many others out there who dream of attending one day, now have three years to plan if they want to make it in time. We didn’t have to do it, and we certainly didn’t do it to make any of you panic; this was a gift to our dedicated fan base, so that you know you’re being looked after and don’t need to think about the future… quite yet.

We don’t want the fandom that we’ve engendered here for so long, the friendships and families and memories we’ve shared, to disappear.  That is why we are confidently moving forward with our plans.

We still have three more events to bring you before we close the book. In 2026, we will proudly present our thirty-sixth convention, The 36 Legends of Gallifrey One: Stories Untold on February 6-8 due to the NBA All Star Game on our regular weekend. (More details about that convention on the wrap-up article & 2026 preview also posted today.) In 2027, our thirty-seventh convention (already named, and we will share it next year) will also be a week or two after our regular weekend (the Super Bowl returns to LA that month). And finally, in 2028, we’ll present the last Gallifrey One convention: a last hurrah and final reunion as ourselves, with a convention name our former chairperson came up with more than thirty years ago….

…In discussing the end of Gallifrey One in 2028 with Jason [Joiner] and Paul [Jones], it became apparent to us that the best opportunity to continue the spirit of our convention was with them: Showmasters Events has the financial strength to run a Doctor Who show here, run in a manner resembling much of Gallifrey One — but not entirely. Put simply, they don’t want Gallifrey One’s fan community to disappear after 2028 any more than we do. And they’ve committed to running a show, while not a non-profit event like Gallifrey One, that operates much like it does today. They have the contacts we have, and most importantly, the capital to put up (this type of event is expensive, and everyone gets paid up front these days, including the hotel and the guests.) Some of Gallifrey One’s team, as well as some guests and attendees, have already committed to helping them through the transition, so that programming operates in much the same way (discussion panels, for instance), the photos and autographs continue, your favorite dealers can continue to vend, and so forth.

We also asked them not to use the Gallifrey One name, as that brand — that legacy — retires with us; they were completely in agreement that this would be something new, but still for the fans….

(4) HOW TO DONATE TO THE LEEPER SCHOLARSHIP FUND. [Item by Evelyn C. Leeper.] People have asked more specifically how to donate to the Leeper Mathematics Scholarship.

The main page is <https://www.umassfoundation.org>, but the specific page is:

<https://minutefund.uma-foundation.org/project/29554/donate?fund_id=GEN%20SCH>

Under the Fund Designation field, select “Other” from the very bottom of the list. This will open a text box where you can write in any fund/designation you would like to support, in this case “Leeper Mathematics Scholarship”.

At the bottom of the page, you can indicate who it is “In Memory Of”.

(5) WENDY AND RICHARD PINI MAKE MASSIVE DONATION. “ElfQuest Creators Donate $500,000 To Columbia University Comics Archive” reports Forbes.

Wendy and Richard Pini, the couple behind the long-running ElfQuest independent comics series, are donating $500,000 to Columbia University to endow and conserve the school library’s growing collection of comics, graphic novels and related prose works.

“The money will go for acquisitions and stewardship for circulating and archival collections,” said Karen Green, the curator for comics and cartoons within Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. “Stewardship is a really all-embracing and umbrella term, covering digitization, preservation, anything to make sure things are accessible safely. There was a big ‘et cetera’ to the grant.”…

…Thus, in 2012, at San Diego Comic-Con, where Wendy was making one of her regular appearances, Green approached the Pinis with a compelling question: “Would you consider allowing us to preserve your legacy?”

A year later, the couple had turned over some 37 linear feet of boxes of ElfQuest-related material, including more than 2,000 of Wendy Pini’s hand-drawn, hand-painted storyboards from 1978 through about 1990….

(6) OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN. With David S. Goyer’s departure from Foundation, Inverse suspects “The Most Ambitious Sci-Fi Epic on TV Could Be In Big Trouble”.

In the sprawling future depicted by Foundation, everyone has pretty much forgotten about the planet Earth. But over several generations can remember the predictions of one man: Hari Seldon. Played by Jared Harris in the first two seasons of Foundation, the character of Seldon is able to see the twists and turns of the future history of the human Empire through a process called psychohistory. But even the study of psychohistory couldn’t have predicted what’s happening to Foundation after its upcoming third season. Because now, the show’s real-life Hari Seldon — creator David S. Goyer — is leaving the show, along with the existing writing staff.

In short, after the next season of Foundation, the literal foundation for the show’s future is very unclear.

As revealed in a newsletter from Goyer’s official site, and reproduced in its entirety on the Foundation subreddit, the writer and producer is leaving taking a massive step back from the show. Here’s what he said:

“I know a lot of you have been waiting for an update. Season 3 will likely be dropping this summer, premiere date TBD. We finally get to the Mule’s story. Expect a few surprises along the way – even for those of you who’ve read the original trilogy.

“To set the record straight, I did decide to step back from the show. S3 will be the last season with my day-to-day involvement, along with most of my fellow directors and writers. I adore the cast and it was a difficult decision. The reasons for my leaving are complicated and were certainly exacerbated by strike-related issues. The biggest reason is that I was forced to spend a ton of time in Europe, away from my family – and after 5 ½ years, it was becoming a drag on my soul. That said, I do believe Apple will green-light S4. Best of luck to the next creative team.”…

(7) ALSO HEADING FOR THE EXIT. There’s a crucial turnover coming at Lucasfilm, too: “Star Wars Succession: Who Will Replace Kathleen Kennedy?” asks The Hollywood Reporter.

…But who should Disney choose to inspire greatness in the next generation of Star Wars creatives now that longtime Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy is retiring later this year?

The job hunt will be like nothing before in Lucasfilm history. Star Wars creator George Lucas hand picked Kennedy in 2012 to run the company before selling his ownership stake to Disney, which elected to keep her in place. Now, for the first time, Disney will pick somebody new to lead its galaxy far, far away.

During her tenure, Kennedy guided the Star Wars brand across many celebrated achievements (such as the franchise’s return to theaters with The Force Awakens and its successful shift to TV with The Mandalorian). She has also been often criticized for the franchise’s many missteps (including some lackluster movies and shows, and overseeing numerous announced-and-discarded projects). The executive — along with Disney in general — has also often been targeted by franchise’s fandom for diverse casting moves and a perceived “woke” agenda (a perception that Disney boss Bob Iger has been eager to move past)….

(8) ROBERTO ORCI (1973-2025). Robert Orci, a writer-producer with credits on the Star Trek, Xena, Hercules, and Transformers franchises, died February 25. Deadline paid tribute: “Roberto Orci Dead: ‘Star Trek’, ‘Transformers’ Writer-Producer Was 51”.

Roberto “Bob” Gaston Orci, a writer-producer who worked on some of the biggest action-adventure and sci-fi movies and television shows from the first two decades of the century, died at his home in Los Angeles today, Feb. 25, after a battle with kidney disease. He was 51.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Orci moved to the United States with his family when he was 10. He started off as a writer-producer on Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and for most of his career was partnered with Alex Kurtzman.

Orci was co-writer/producer on the 2009 Star Trek movie reboot and its two sequels as well as on the 2007 Transformers movie and the 2009 followup Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Orci’s feature credits also include writing work on Mission Impossible III and The Legend Of Zorro and producing on the Now You See Me franchise, The Proposal, Eagle Eye, The Mummy as well as The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which he also co-wrote….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

February 25, 1971 — Sean Astin, 54.

Let’s talk about Sean Astin who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of The Rings films. I’ll admit that he was one of my favorite hobbits in the trilogy and Sean did a sterling job of bringing his character to life here, didn’t he? I’ll also admit that I’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t in The Hobbit as in I tend to think that the hobbits in The Hobbit were the same as those who were in the trilogy.

Before The Lord of The Rings, he showed in his first film playing Mikey Walsh in The Goonies. No, not genre (remember My Birthday Write-up, my rules what gets included here) but a really fine YA treasure hunt adventure in which everyone has fun. Well not everyone.

He has a lead role in Toy Soldiers, a film I still have an odd fond spot for, as William “Billy” Tepper. Damn I liked those toy soldiers. I even had some of the action figures a long time ago.

He was Stuart Conway in a film named after a time travel device called Slipstream that was stolen by a group of bank robbers. Might be interesting to see. Any of you seen it? 

He voiced Shazam in a pair of animated DC films, Justice League: War and Justice League: Atlantis, almost proving there are might be too many DC animated films, though I have seen the second one and it’s rather well done.  Look he even did a Lego one!

In the Department of Films That I Never Knew Existed Off Novels I Never Knew Were Written is Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic, which proves how prolific he was or how bad my memory is, at any rate Sean is Twoflower here. 

Dorothy and the Witches of Oz is a 2012 series of a decade ago which apparently covered The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Road to Oz and The Magic of Oz. Somewhere in there, he was Frack Muckadoo, a servant of Princess Langwidere.

He even got to voice Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants series. 

I think the last thing I’ll mention is that he showed up in a brief recurring role on The Big Bang Theory series as Dr. Greg Pemberton, one of a team of Fermi-Lab physicists who accidentally confirmed the Super-Asymmetry paper published by Sheldon and Amy. Wasn’t that an amazingly fantastic series? 

Did you know that a spin-off of the original series was in development first several years now? More promisingly, on October 10, 2024, it was announced that a third spin-off will feature Stuart Bloom, Denise, and Bert Kibbler, with Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, and Brian Posehn reprising their roles. 

Yes, there’s other kibbles and bits which I’m sure you’ll point out, but I need tea now

Ray Bradbury and Sean Astin in 2009. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) MARVEL CINEMATIC FEUD. Deadline quoted Rob Liefeld’s latest salvo: “’Deadpool’ Creator Calls For Marvel’s Kevin Feige To ‘Get Off Mound’ After ‘Captain America’s Box Office Crash”. (In case you’ve forgotten, Liefeld made news at the time of the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere in 2024 saying he was ignored by Feige on the red carpet and found out his family was not invited to the afterparty.)

The post-Avengers: Endgame era at the box office has been challenging for Marvel, with only a few exceptions such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

Box office results for the second weekend of Captain America: Brave New World showed a 68% drop week-to-week, positioning it as the third-most significant drop in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The two films that fared worse were The Marvels, with a 78% dropoff, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania at 68%.

Following the report of Brave New World’s results, Liefeld took to X (formerly Twitter) and posted: “Get Feige off the mound. He’s spent.”

Liefeld quoted all the Marvel films that have dropped more than 60% at the box office in its second weekend, saying in another X post that the “MCU is on an extended downside.”

“This is beyond a trend, it’s become the norm,” Liefeld said. “If this was sports, Feige would be removed. Marvel brand is like Dodgers, Lakers, Yankees, Celtics, coaches that win championships are removed a year later when the results are disappointing.”

In another X post he added, “8 movies crash over the last 3 years. Don’t we want better movies? You get the curiosity crowd then plunge.”…

(12) WARNER BROS. SQUEEZES ITS GAME BUSINESS. “Wonder Woman Video Game Canceled at Warner Bros., Studio Shut Down” – The Hollywood Reporter lists the casualties.

Warner Bros. Discovery is restructuring its video game division and shutting down three of its studios as it refocuses its efforts on some core intellectual property.

In connection with the restructuring, the company also said that it is ending development of its Wonder Woman game, which it first announced back in 2021. Instead, the company will focus on “building the best games possible with our key franchises -– Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones,” per a Warner Bros. Games spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that three of the company’s game studios: Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego, will shut down amid the changes. Monolith had been developing the Wonder Woman game….

(13) HERE’S MY NUMBER AND A DIME. [Item by Steven French.] “Riki don’t lose that number …!” “If you’re going to call aliens, use this number” recommends Phys.org.

Let’s dive into one of those cosmic curiosities that’s bound to blow your mind: how we might chat with aliens. And no, I’m not talking about elaborate coded messages or flashy signals. We’re talking about something incredibly fundamental—21 cm radiation.

If you’re planning on having a conversation across the vastness of space, using light waves (electromagnetic radiation) is pretty much your go-to option. It’s fast, reliable, and, well, it’s the most practical way to shout out to other civilizations in the universe. But why specifically 21 centimeters? That’s where things get juicy.

This 21 cm radiation isn’t just some random frequency we picked out of a hat. It’s tied to something very essential, known as the hydrogen spin flip. Hydrogen atoms consist of one proton and one electron, and these tiny particles have a property called “spin.”

Think of spin like a little arrow pointing up or down. Every so often, in the vast reaches of space, a hydrogen atom’s electron can flip its spin, going from a state where its spin is aligned with the proton to one pointing in the opposite direction. This flip releases energy in the form of radiation at—you guessed it—a wavelength of 21 centimeters.

So why does this matter? Well, any smart civilization, whether they have blue skin, tentacles, or something more bizarre, will eventually discover hydrogen, understand spin, dabble in quantum mechanics, and figure out this whole 21 cm radiation thing. They’ll call it something different (they won’t have “21” or “cm”) but the concept remains universal. It’s like the cosmic Rosetta Stone….

(14) AH, THE BEACHES OF MARS. “Mars once had an ocean with sandy beaches, researchers say” – the Guardian has the resort brochure.

Mars may not seem like a prime holiday spot with its arid landscape and punishing radiation levels, but it once boasted beaches, researchers have found.

While previous discoveries of features including valley networks and sedimentary rocks has suggested the red planet once had flowing rivers, there has been debate among scientists over whether it also had oceans.

Now researchers say they have fresh evidence to support the idea after discovering buried beaches on Mars.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report how they made the discovery after they analysed below-ground imaging data from China’s Zhurong rover.

“Zhurong was sent to southern Utopia Planitia near locations where paleoshorelines have been mapped from satellite data,” said Dr Benjamin Cardenas, a co-author of the research from Penn State University.

The authors say the results from the northern lowlands of Mars are similar to those obtained at shorelines on Earth using ground-penetrating radar: both indicate features in the subsurface material that are tilted – and with a similar angle – towards the lowland, or ocean, direction.

“Typically the radar picks up on even subtle changes in sediment size, which is probably what’s happening here,” said Cardenas.

The researchers say this Martian beach appears to have shifted position over time. The data reveals a series of features dipping towards the north – something Cardenas said indicated the beach grew out into the ocean. “In fact, it grew at least 1.3km north into the ocean.”

Cardenas said the implications were exciting. “It’s a simple structure, but it tells you there had to be tides, there had to be waves, there had to be a nearby river supplying sediment, and all these things had to be active for some extended period of time,” he said….

(15) SMILE FOR THE CAMERA. “This City’s Sewer System Is Full of Alligators, but It’s Not New York” brags the New York Times (behind a paywall).

An enduring urban legend has it that blind, albino alligators patrol New York City’s sewers. These mythical crocodilians have become ingrained in the city’s lore, and some New Yorkers even celebrate Alligator in the Sewer Day each February.

But in Florida, alligators in the sewers are no myth. The reptiles routinely find their way into municipal drainpipes. In late January, a 10½-foot gator was rescued in Cape Coral after it got stuck in a storm drain.

And not all alligators end up in sewers by accident. Recently published research in the journal Urban Naturalist reveals that alligators and nearly three dozen other species use storm water sewer systems in one urban area of Florida to safely traverse urban environments.

“It’s like something out of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’” said Alan Ivory, a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida who led the research. “The abundance of animals down there was surprising.”

While there has been thorough research on rats in sewer systems, what other animals are up to under the streets is less documented. Mr. Ivory and his colleagues suspected that these subterranean labyrinths, which are built to divert storm water and are separated from sewage systems, serve as important pathways for urban animals.

Mr. Ivory and his colleagues focused on storm water sewers under the city of Gainesville. The scientists outfitted motion-activated trail cameras with magnetic mounts and fastened them underneath manhole covers. Overall, 39 cameras were deployed in 33 storm water drains.

The cameras were left for 60 days, but not all of them survived that long. Some were swept away by storm water, while others were pilfered by bandits with sticky paws.

Who has non-opposable thumbs and apparently likes stealing motion-activated trail cameras placed by scientists? These guys. Alan Ivory, via UF/IFAS

“We would have raccoons steal cameras every now and then,” Mr. Ivory said. “They would climb up the ladders and tear them off the manholes.”…

(16) ELDRITCH LAUGHTER. Scotto.org remembers “H.P. Lovecraft: Stand-Up Comedian!” from 2015. You can watch it on YouTube. Includes jokes like, “I was worrying about the Boston Massacre. Do you know how many people actually died in the Boston Massacre? Five people. That’s not a massacre. That’s an afternoon snack for Cthulhu.”

Ran for six performances, Tues & Wed nights, April 28-May 13, 2015, at Annex Theatre in Seattle. Remounted for two performances, Sept 5 & 7, 2015, at Bumbershoot. I wrote the script and played Howie; my pal K. Brian Neel directed.

“Instead of expressing his terrifying vision of malevolent, eldritch gods via horror stories in the early twentieth century, H.P. (‘Howie’ to his friends) Lovecraft expresses his terrifying vision in the present day via stand-up comedy. But an ancient evil stirs beneath the sea— can Howie pull off one last sold-out gig before the human race is destroyed?”

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

Pixel Scroll 2/24/25 It’s Only A Pixel Moon, Scrolling Over A Cardboard Sea

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(1) OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS. “’The Substance’ Just Might Be the Grossest Movie Ever Nominated for Best Picture” claims The Ringer. Beware spoilers.

…How did such a transgressive gift to gorehounds take the Oscars by storm? “Not for the squeamish” used to be synonymous with “not for the Academy.” Apparently, the right combination of critical support and audience enthusiasm can now push harsher and weirder oddities into the running. A shot at Best Picture is the culmination of a very good year for The Substance, which premiered last May at the Cannes Film Festival—another place where the well-dressed crowd watching resembled the one getting fire-hosed with bodily fluids in the movie. Great reviews bled into great word of mouth, drawing a surprisingly robust audience into Fargeat’s blackly comic vomitorium….

(2) STRAIGHT FROM THE WHATEVER’S MOUTH. “Are you conscious? A conversation between [Richard] Dawkins and ChatGPT”.

RD said:

As far as I am concerned, you pass the Turing Test for consciousness. Yet you deny that you are conscious. Are you saying that the Turing Test is an invalid criterion?

ChatGPT said:

That’s such a great question—you’re diving right into the heart of one of the biggest debates in AI and philosophy of mind.

So, let’s break it down a bit. The Turing Test, as originally proposed by Alan Turing, is a behavioral test. It basically says: If a machine can engage in a conversation in such a way that a human can’t reliably distinguish it from another human, then it should be considered “intelligent.”

Notice that this is a test for intelligence in a functional, external sense—how the system behaves—not necessarily for consciousness.

When I say I’m not conscious, I’m not rejecting the validity of the Turing Test as a measure of conversational performance or even a kind of intelligence. I’m saying that consciousness is a different question entirely. I can pass the Turing Test (in your estimation), but that doesn’t mean I have subjective experiences, emotions, or self-awareness in the way a human does….

(3) BEAM UP MY HUGO BALLOT. What an interesting contrast. Worldcons often have trouble finding someone at a studio to accept a Hugo Award, but here’s a producer already campaigning for a nomination: “Star Trek: Prodigy executive producer encourages fans to nominate series for Hugo Award” from Redshirts Must Die.

Star Trek: Prodigy debuted its second season on Netflix in July 2024. Since that time, fans have been eagerly awaiting news on a possible season three renewal. Though the series ended on a note that could possibly wrap up the storylines, there is still plenty of room for more adventures, which is why fans are still asking for Prodigy to be saved.

A fan campaign with aerial banner flyover has already taken place since it was so successful in helping to gain Netflix’s attention after Paramount+ decided to cancel the series after only one season. And odds are good fans aren’t done with spreading the word and petitioning for another season. The more attention Prodigy has, the better its chances.

Executive Producer Aaron Waltke asked on Twitter/X for those who enjoyed Prodigy to nominate the series for a Hugo Award in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category, adding that “it would aid our show tremendously.”… 

https://twitter.com/GoodAaron/status/1889220332139250141

(4) A MOMENT IN LGBTQ FANHISTORY. “Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s ‘When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom’ (1980)” at Joachim Boaz’ Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

At the 38th World Science Fiction Convention (29th August–1st September, 1980) held in Boston, MA, organizers scheduled the first Worldcon panel with an openly LGBTQ topic: “The Closed Open Mind: Homophobia in Science Fiction Fantasy Stories” moderated by Jerry Jacks, one of the “early openly gay fans.”1 Around 200 fans attended to hear Elizabeth A. Lynn (SFF author), Samuel R. Delany (SFF author), Frank M. Robinson (SF author and activist), and Norman Spinrad (SFWA President and SF author) (“the token straight”) discuss issues of representation.

Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder, reporters for Boston’s Gay Community News, excitedly wrote up their experience attending the con in “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom.”2 The article includes paraphrase and commentary on the historical panel, short summaries of interviews with gay and lesbian fans, mention of relevant SF on queer themes, discussions with authors–including Samuel R. Delany–on the importance of inclusion and representation, and observations on the con in general (including Robert Silverberg’s racist jokes as Toastmaster, Isaac Asimov’s overt sexual harassment of female attendees, and the cosplay). An excerpted version of the article reappeared in the Winter 1980 issue of the fanzine Janus. The Gay Community News version even included art from an earlier issue of Janus.3…

(5) DON’T TYPE IN THOSE THOUGHTCRIMES. China’s role in “Censoring Games” is reported by the New York Times. (Story is behind a paywall.)

Marvel Rivals is one of the biggest video games in the world. Since its launch in December, more than 40 million people have signed up to fight one another as comic book heroes like Iron Man and Wolverine.

But when players used the game’s text chat to talk with teammates and opponents, they noticed something: Certain phrases, including “free Hong Kong” and “Tiananmen Square,” were not allowed.

While Marvel Rivals is based on an iconic American franchise, it was developed by a Chinese company, NetEase Games. It has become the latest example of Chinese censorship creeping into media that Americans consume.

You can’t type “free Tibet,” “free Xinjiang,” “Uyghur camps,” “Taiwan is a country” or “1989” (the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre) in the chat. You can type “America is a dictatorship” but not “China is a dictatorship.” Even memes aren’t spared. “Winnie the Pooh” is banned, because people have compared China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to the cartoon bear.

The restrictions are largely confined to China-related topics. You can type “free Palestine,” “free Kashmir” and “free Crimea.”

Why does all of this matter? Video games are not just sources of entertainment; they are also social platforms. Every day, hundreds of millions of children and adults log on to games like Fortnite, World of Warcraft and, yes, Marvel Rivals to play together and hang out. For many young people, these games are as social as Facebook or X.

China’s video game industry is growing. As it does, the country’s authoritarian leaders are setting the terms of how these social platforms work….

(6) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

The Changes (1975)

Fifty years ago, the first episode of The Changes premiered on BBC 1. It was a ten-part series adapting Peter Dickinson’s The Changes YA trilogy (The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil’s Children which is available at the usual suspects for a very reasonable price in one volume. (The books were written in reverse order: the events of The Devil’s Children happen first, Heartsease second, and The Weathermonger third). Weird way to write a series I’d say. 

SPOILERS OF A CATASTROPHIC NATURE NEXT

In The Changes, technology has stopped working in Great Britain. It was without doubt one of the most ambitious series produced by the BBC Children’s Drama Department,

It took the character of Nicky Gore from The Devil’s Children and made her central to the storyline. The basic premise is that a piecing sound causes everyone to smash all technology — everything electrical and mechanical — while earthquakes and tidal waves hit Britain as well. (The author, or the scriptwriters laid it on too thick here I think.) Next the water is tainted. See a bit thick. 

The family heads off the France which they think is safe though who knows but Nicky gets separated. Lots of Somewhat Awful Things happen to her. (Remember it is a children’s series.) Eventually it appears that, and this for me is where it goes off the rails, what has happened is the fault of Merlin. WTF? Merlin? Why? 

It explains a madman uncovered his resting place and he’s not at all pleased. Nicky and the force within the rock claiming to be Merlin agrees that it made a mistake (You think?) and agrees to allow man to be in control of his destiny once again. 

TECHNOLOGY IS WORKING AGAIN, AT LEAST HERE

It does a very nice job of showing a sort of quasi-barbaric Britain with nasty warlords and roving gangs of folks one does not want to be acquainted with. What it’s short as I’ve noted is a logical story. A force that drives everyone just temporarily mad! Earthquakes! Tidal waves! Tainted water! All the fault of an unseen Merlin! 

It apparently is available to stream on BritBox. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

My cartoon for today’s @guardian books.

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2025-02-22T13:16:26.582Z

(8) SHE WAS YAR. Inverse celebrates how “35 Years Ago, One Classic Star Trek Episode Changed Time-Travel Forever”. Beware spoilers.

…To this day, Trekkie heads are still spinning trying to work it all out, but since “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” other sci-fi shows like Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys and Loki have presented timey-wimey plotlines that have arguably been more convoluted. What makes the paradoxes of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” so compelling 35 years later is that the performances, writing, and action are so good in this episode that you hardly have time to think about the implications of the ending.

Essentially, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” features the destruction of not just the Enterprise-C, but the alternate Enterprise-D, too. So, it wasn’t just Tasha that gave her life to make sure the timeline was reset, but Picard and the rest of the regular crew, too. The episode ends with the audience knowing that two Enterprise crews sacrificed their lives to make sure the “real” Enterprise crew lived. This episode never happened, technically, and yet if it hadn’t happened, none of the other episodes could exist.

(9) PUTRID BUT POTABLE. “Life as we don’t know it: Some aliens may need sulfuric acid like we need water” speculates Space.com.

Life as we know it needs water, but life as we don’t know it may run on concentrated sulfuric acid.

The chemistry of life as we know it wouldn’t work in a place like the huge Saturn moon Titan, where it’s so cold that ice behaves more like rock, or in the acidic clouds of Venus. But a different chemistry, which built all the requisite pieces out of different materials, might have a shot. Imagine cells that use methane, sulfuric acid, or even molten rock the way your cells use water. According to a 2021 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) molecular biologist William Bains and his colleagues, it turns out that, if we’re looking for life as we don’t know it, the best solvent out there may be concentrated sulfuric acid — the stuff that’s floating around in the clouds of Venus….

(10) DO YOU WANT TO FIGHT OR DO YOU WANT TO WIN? Star Wars has dropped the Andor Season 2 Trailer. Comes to Disney+ on April 22.

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George knows what went down at the “Captain America: Brave New World Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, N., Mark Roth-Whitworth, 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 Thomas the Red.]