Seattle Worldcon 2025’s consultative vote drew just a quarter the number of participants who turned out for Glasgow 2024’s inaugural consultative vote last year. Glasgow tallied 1260 ballots, Seattle only 343.
Seattle ran votes on two of the Constitutional amendments that received first passage at the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting and are up for ratification – (1) the revisions to the Hugo Award categories for Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist, and (2) proposal to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.
VOTING RESULTS. The results of Seattle’s poll are:
In the vote to amend the constitution so as to eliminate the Retro Hugo Awards:
Yes: 164 No: 167 Total: 331
In the vote to amend the Hugo Award categories for Best Fan and Professional Artist:
Yes: 124 No: 160 Total: 284
These consultative votes are not provided for in the WSFS Constitution, are not binding, and have no effect other than that the information will be known to those at the Business Meeting. The Seattle committee said, “The purpose of the consultative vote was to test whether this type of vote is feasible, in case the practice is someday adopted as a formal part of the WSFS decision-making process.”
Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp provided visuals to familiarize viewers with the basic appearance of their participation screen and the way virtual platform provider, Lumi Global will facilitate the Zoom sessions. Lipp described how the chair will be able to identify people’s requests to speak for or against motions, points of order, and other claims of parliamentary priority.
Lumi Global’s services will cost $20,000, said Lipp, some part being paid by the Scalzi Family Foundation.
Seattle’s decision to hold the Business Meeting in a virtual format for the first time ever is touted as a way to “open participation to both attending and virtual attending members of the Worldcon, and hopefully enable broad participation without the need to sacrifice other convention activities.” Today’s Town Hall drew around 42 participants, the vast majority Seattle committee division and department heads and staff, the rest identifiable business meeting regulars and a few others.
One Town Hall participant challenged the legitimacy of convening a virtual Business Meeting, citing WSFS Constitution section 5.1.1: “Business Meetings of WSFS shall be held at advertised times at each Worldcon”. Business Meeting chair Jesi Lipp said that the committee had the authority to “define their own boundaries” – which is to say, give “at each Worldcon” a novel meaning. Lipp indicated their decision would be issued as one of the rulings of the chair at the virtual meeting, and said that the meeting has the procedural ability to challenge a ruling of the chair, and if it votes to overrule the chair there would just be an in-person meeting at Seattle. (Presently, the only in-person session planned for is the one where Site Selection voting results will be announced.) This was an unexpected concession.
While only Seattle 2025 WSFS members admitted to the Zoom session will be able to participate and vote, the virtual Business Meeting will be publicly livestreamed, and also recorded, with the livestream recordings made available on YouTube. Chair Jesi Lipp noted that if the meeting enters executive session – for example, to receive the report of the Committee on Investigation into the Chengdu Hugo Awards vote which was appointed at Glasgow 2024 – that portion of the meeting will not be livestreamed.
Business Meeting sessions will be supported by a Discord channel where people can carry on side discussions. The Discord will only be available for use for a number of hours beginning before the meeting and sometime afterwards, and made read-only the rest of the time. (Lipp pointed out that people obviously still have the use of other social media venues which they already use to discuss WSFS issues.) The Discord will be subject to the convention’s Code of Conduct.
The deadline to submit items for the Business Meeting agenda is June 4. Send them to bm-submit@seattlein2025.org.
The dates of the virtual Business Meetings are:
Friday, July 4, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Sunday, July 13, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Saturday, July 19, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7) Friday, July 25, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
I rank Roger Zelazny as one of the best F/SF writers of his generation. One of my prime regrets is that I never got to meet him.
I was immediately intrigued when offered the chance to provide covers for a multi-volume collection of his works by NESFA Press, the publishing side of the New England Science Fiction Association.
While pitching the project, the publisher explained that Roger had said in an interview that he always wished to have me do a cover for one of his books; alas that it didn’t come to pass during his lifetime. But I was happy to show my respect for his legacy through my art….
…Upon reflection I settled on a blend of 1) managing elements of RZ stories that applied to tales within a particular volume, and 2) adding things ‘on the fly’ as a part of the process of doing the painting, using connections that popped up while adding details to the composition.
I’m not going to lie…it did occur to me that I could paint anything at random, knowing that a connection could be found between what I chose to depict and some narrative or thematic element in Zelazny’s writing.
That was liberating. I felt free to develop the composition from a “big design” standpoint since there was such a wealth of material to draw on to “populate” the image areas.
The idea of running one image across the spines of the seven books was discussed early on; I believe Alice Lewis, jacket designer on this project, was the one who originally mentioned it. The challenge of making it work seemed exciting, so I was drawn to that approach right away….
(2) SEATTLE WORLDCON 2025 CONSULTATIVE VOTE IS OPEN. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting. Voting runs from May 1 to May 31 and is accessed through the member registration portal in the same manner as the Hugo Award voting. More information is available on the Consultative Vote Webpage.
As previously announced, Seattle Worldcon is holding a consultative vote of WSFS members on two of the proposed Constitutional amendments passed on from the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting to the Seattle Worldcon: the proposed revisions of the Hugo Award categories for best professional artist and best fan artist, and the proposed amendment to abolish the Retro Hugo Awards.
The purpose of the consultative vote is to test whether this type of vote is feasible, in case the practice is someday adopted as a formal part of the WSFS decision-making process. These proposals were chosen because they have clearly generated wide interest among the Worldcon community.
…[Mary] Shelley drew on a mythology of technology that goes back to the 6th century B.C. when the figure Prometheus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it to mankind. The “fire bringer,” is often associated with Lucifer, (literally meaning “light bearer”), who pilfered light from the heavens and brought it down to Earth. The “fall of man” implies an age when mortals are illuminated with knowledge. Immanuel Kant was the first to modernize the term, when he nicknamed his pal, Benjamin Franklin, “the Prometheus of modern times” for his nifty work with kites. In the early 19th century, Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus put the concept into terms of controlling biological forces. She not only arguably invented science fiction, but her novel offered a plot device for modern tales, including Flowers for Algernon, The Stand, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Yann Martel’s short story “We Ate the Children Last.” We all understand the illusions. A scientist sets out to create a more perfect entity, only to have it backfire as the thing he creates gets out of control.
…By the early 1980s, Richard Mulligan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isolated genetic code and wrapped it up in a virus, returning it to humankind as a tool. In the same decade, companies such as Biogen and Genentech claimed the patents to control the first applications of genetic engineering. Scientists today are using the gene editing tool CRISPR to do things such as tinker with the color of butterfly wings, genetically alter pigs, and engineer microbes with potentially pathogenic or bioterror purposes. Last year, a group of 150 scientists held a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School to discuss a project to synthesize the code of a human genome from scratch using chemical techniques. As Andrew Pollack wrote in The New York Times, “the prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.” In August, Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland reported using CRISPR to alter a human embryo….
…We are at the very start of the “industrial revolution of the human genome,” just as Shelley was writing at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Her essential insight is that science and technology can progress but will never achieve social control without a willful and ongoing abdication, or repression, of our agency. Shelley wants to tell us that what we seek from technology is based on our existential fear of being in control over our own lives, which have no ultimate solution, and which compels us to so eagerly pursue what psychologists call an external locus of control. But mythology is often first presented as a utopia, only to result in a dystopian reality…
The Short: I recently reread one of my favorite SF anthologies as a much younger person, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume One and Volume Two, Anthony Boucher editor, 1959 Doubleday/1960 Science Fiction Book Club. It was available for purchase only as a two volume set when new. I am not aware of any other SF anthology that includes two novels and 10 pieces of short fiction, much less one that includes four novels and 20 short fiction works in the set. My favorite novel included is the classic The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, and my favorite short fiction is the classic “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff“, a novella by Theodore Sturgeon. My overall average rating is 3.73/5, or “Very good”. It was great to rediscover how great the John Wyndham novel Re-Birth is….
…The makers of Andor have teased how transformative it can be to revisit Rogue One after the prequel-to-a-prequel’s conclusion. As of last week, Andor creator Tony Gilroy hadn’t rewatched Rogue since finishing Andor, but he hyped the practice anyway: “Other people around me have done it. So I’ve been reassured. And I’ve seen bits and pieces of it; it comes on, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, holy crap. Look what that does.’” Diego Luna was even more insistent.“I urge people to see Rogue One right after the end of Season 2,” the actor who plays Cassian said. “They’re going to see a different film.”…
There follow five takeaways which, as you should expect, are full of spoilers.
…As the second Trump administration lurches into its third month, moving fast and breaking government, I’ve been studying what American writers have suggested would occur if a demagogue were elected president. A next step, in novels such as Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” involves a direct attack on the Supreme Court if it declines to affirm a president’s agenda. Much the same forces are at work 90 years later. Alternative histories, particularly dystopias, reflect their societies’ radical pessimism, as Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore suggested in 2017:
“Dystopia used to be a fiction of resistance; it’s become a fiction of submission, the fiction of an untrusting, lonely, and sullen twenty-first century, the fiction of fake news and Infowars, the fiction of helplessness and hopelessness.”…
What unites the books on the shortlist for this year’s International Booker prize? Brevity, for one thing: five of the six are under 200 pages, and half barely pass 100. They are works of precision and idiosyncrasy that don’t need space to make a big impression. Themes are both timely – AI, the migration crisis – and evergreen: middle-class ennui; the place of women in society. And for the second consecutive year, every book comes from an independent publisher, with four from tiny micropresses. Ahead of the winner announcement on 20 May, here’s our verdict on the shortlist….
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
May 18, 1962 — Twilight Zone’s“I Sing The Body Electric”
They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone. — Intro narration.
On this date in 1962, The Twilight Zone aired “I Sing The Body Electric”.
It was scripted by Ray Bradbury and although he had contributed several scripts to the series, this was the only one produced. (His first script, “Here There Be Tygers,” was accepted but never filmed.)
It became the basis for his 1969 short story of the same name, named after an 1855 Walt Whitman poem which celebrates the human body and its connection to the universe. It was according to Whitman anti-slavery. The original publication, like the other poems in Leaves of Grass, did not have a title. In fact, the line “I sing the body electric” was not added until the 1867 edition.
Bradbury’s short story would be published first in McCall’s, August 1969. Knopf would release his I Sing The Body Electric collection in October of that year. It’s been included in least fifty collections and anthologies.)
James Sheldon and William F. Claxton directed the episode; Sheldon directed some of The Man from U.N.C.L.E episodes; Claxton is known for Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. I’ll confess to having seen a fair amount of the former but none of the latter.
A large ensemble cast was needed as, minor spoiler alert, the primary cast here are shown at two ages, hence Josephine Hutchinson, David White, Vaughn Taylor, Doris Packer, Veronica Cartwright, Susan Crane and Charles Herbert all being performers even though the actual script calls for very few characters.
Another spoiler alert. Perhaps I’m being overly cautious but we did get a complaint about spoiling a 50-year-old episode of a program by not noting that I was going to say something about that program, hence spoiler alerts for these programs.
Auntie, the organic one, caring for the children has decided they are too much of a burden and has decided to leave. So father decided to get a robot grandmother, a new fangled invention in their city. The mechanical grandmother after some resentment by one child is accepted by all after she saves one child from mortal injury and Serling says after that —
As of this moment, the wonderful electric grandmother moved into the lives of children and father. She became integral and important. She became the essence. As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues without thinking of her. Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel would remind them of her. She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical – like Grandma.
So this gentle tale that only Bradbury could write of the children who love her and the ever so wonderful mechanical grandmother ends with Serling saying the words scripted of course by Bradbury for him:
A fable? Most assuredly. But who’s to say at some distant moment there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother whose stock in trade is love? Fable, sure, but who’s to say?
This was the year that the entire season of the series won the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo at Chicon III. Just my opinion, but I think of all the nominees that it was clearly the far superior choice to win the Hugo. Really superior.
It is streaming on Paramount+.
There’s also a boy in the family but I couldn’t find an image of all three children, the father and the grandmother that was as good as this one is.
Travel back with David Tennant, Billie Piper and host Steffan Powell through a host of Whoniversal history…
As Season 2 comes to a climax, a special edition of Doctor Who: Unleashed is set to air on BBC Three, BBC iPlayer and BBC Wales. Steffan Powell is once again set to take a trip through the time vortex as he invites viewers on a journey celebrating the last twenty years since Doctor Who returned, and he will be joined by a host of cast and creatives that have played a part in bringing the show back into the Whoniverse.
Joining Steffan for the ride are some of the show’s most recognisable faces, including past Doctors David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker, former companions Billie Piper, Pearl Mackie, and Mandip Gill, ex-showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, the current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa alongside his newest companion Varada Sethu, as well as the current showrunner and the man who brought the show back in 2005, Russell T Davies.
As well as chatting with the stars about what Doctor Who means to them, Steffan will be revealing secrets from behind the scenes with interviews with those who work behind the cameras to bring Doctor Who to life….
…The idea of the Silurian Hypothesis was inspired by an episode of Doctor Who, where intelligent reptilian creatures called Silurians awakened from 400 million years of hibernation due to nuclear testing. While this was a work of fiction, the hypothesis raised a profound possibility: What if there were once other advanced civilizations on Earth that have completely vanished?
Humans often think that their existence and their civilization are eternal, but history teaches us otherwise. Take ancient Egypt, for instance. For over 3,000 years and across 30 dynasties, Egyptians lived under the shadow of the pyramids, fished the Nile, and mingled with other cultures. To them, their civilization seemed everlasting, yet it too disappeared. Similar fates befell the Mesopotamians, the Indus Valley civilization, the Greeks, Nubians, Persians, Romans, Incas, and Aztecs. These great empires, once thriving with millions, left behind scant evidence of their grandeur.
Modern humans have been around for about 100,000 years, a mere blip in the hundreds of millions of years that complex life has existed on Earth. Given this vast expanse of time, it’s conceivable that other intelligent species might have risen and fallen long before us. Would we even know they had been here?…
…The Silurian Hypothesis suggests looking for markers of industrialization on a global scale. One key marker is changes in the isotopic composition of elements, which can be detected in sedimentary layers. For instance, human activities have altered the nitrogen cycle and increased the levels of certain metals like gold, lead, and platinum. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels has changed the carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere, known as the Suess effect, which is detectable in sediment cores.
Interestingly, a sudden global change in carbon and oxygen isotope levels was observed 56 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM saw Earth’s temperature rise by six degrees Celsius over 200,000 years, with fossil carbon levels spiking. Some scientists speculate that a massive volcanic eruption caused this, but the exact cause remains unknown. Could it have been evidence of an ancient civilization? Probably not, but it does show how such an event could leave a detectable mark.
The Silurian Hypothesis, while not proving the existence of ancient civilizations, provides a framework for searching for them, not just on Earth but also on other planets. The Drake Equation estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy, suggesting there could be anywhere from 150,000 to 1.5 billion. If intelligent life can arise multiple times on a single planet, as the Silurian Hypothesis proposes, it opens up exciting possibilities for finding civilizations throughout the galaxy….
(12) THE INSIDE (THE BOOKSHOP) STORY. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] The Howling (1981) Bookshop scene was filmed at the Cherokee Bookshop, which was on Cherokee just off of Hollywood Boulevard. The wandering customer is Forry Ackerman.
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
The Seattle Worldcon 2025’s WSFS Division Head Cassidy, Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte, and Deputy Hugo Administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart today announced their resignations from the committee in the following statement:
Effective immediately, Cassidy (WSFS DH), Nicholas Whyte (Hugo Administrator) and Esther MacCallum-Stewart (Deputy Hugo Administrator) resign from their respective roles from the Seattle 2025 Worldcon. We do not see a path forward that enables us to make further contributions at this stage.
We want to reaffirm that no LLMs or generative AI have been used in the Hugo Awards process at any stage. Our nomination software NomNom is well-documented on GitHub for anyone to be able to review. We firmly believe in transparency for the awards process and for the Finalists who have been nominated. We believe that the Hugo Awards exist to celebrate our community which is filled with artists, authors, and fans who adore the works of our creative SFF community. Our belief in the mission of the Hugo Awards, and Worldcon in general has guided our actions in the administration of these awards, and now guides our actions in leaving the Seattle Worldcon.
Cassidy
Nicholas Whyte
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
The Seattle Worldcon’s WSFS Division administers the Hugo Awards, Business Meeting, and Site Selection. The committee’s remaining WSFS Division leadership includes Deputy Division Heads Kathryn Duval and Rosemary Parks (who is also Site Selection Coordinator).
Those who had registered for the online event received notifications from Eventbrite, and the announcement was posted in social media.
The town halls are designed for members to ask questions about the business meeting process. The fate of the second town hall announced for May 25 is unknown.
Only works of speculative fiction by an African published between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024 anywhere in the world are eligible.
(3) WSFS BUSINESS MEETING PREPATORY TOWN HALL. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon will host its first WSFS Virtual Town Hall this Sunday, May 4 at Noon Pacific.
The WSFS Business Meeting Team will be hosting two town halls in preparation for the virtual business meetings in July. The town halls are designed for members to ask questions about the business meeting process. The town halls will be recorded and posted on the Seattle Worldcon 2025 YouTube channel for reference.
When: May 4, 2025, at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC – 7) Where: Zoom—link provided to those who RSVP RSVP:Via Eventbrite
Topic: WSFS Business Meeting Basics: Ask your questions about what the business meeting is. How do I submit a proposal? What types of changes can I propose? What if I disagree with a proposal submitted, but would like a changed one?
Town Hall Two
When: May 25, 2025, at noon Pacific Daylight Time (UTC – 7) Where: Zoom—link provided to those who RSVP RSVP:Via Eventbrite
Epic and Disney are launching their most expansive Star Wars collaboration in Fortnite to date with the first entirely Star Wars-themed Battle Royale Season and in-game premiere of Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld on May 2, two days ahead of its Disney+ launch. This marks the first debut of a Disney+ series in a game.
Recently announced at Star Wars Celebration, Fortnite: GALACTIC BATTLE begins May 2 and introduces new Star Wars content and gameplay to Battle Royale each week. Fans can play as Darth Jar Jar or Emperor Palpatine, while piloting ships like X-wings and TIE Fighters. The season will culminate in an epic in-game live event, “Death Star Sabotage.”
The Star Wars Watch Party island will also go live on May 2. Players will have a chance to view the first two episodes of Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, its all-new animated shorts anthology series from creator Dave Filoni that focuses on the criminal underbelly of the Star Wars galaxy through two iconic villains: Asajj Ventress and Cad Bane.
Beyond the Star Wars Watch Party theater, players have the opportunity to fight off incoming waves of Stormtroopers using blasters and lightsabers. The standalone Star Wars Watch Party island was built in Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) using official Star Wars assets.…
…The first time I tried to write a comic book script, I had no guidance about what a script looked like, but I’d read comic books and graphic novels. So I wrote up my idea for a four-to-five-page story and sent it to the editor. He sent it back with a gentle note that read, paraphrased, “This is about twenty pages worth of material.”
I was taken aback because I’d separated it into five pages. But when I looked more closely at it, I saw what he meant. I’d crammed way too much into each of those five pages. With help from the artist I was working with, I pared it down, and we got the story to the required length (with some necessary but painful cuts).
Part of the problem was—and is—that there is no definitive template for comic scripts like there is for screenplays. At the end of this post are links to comic script archives; I suggest browsing them to see how established, published writers have tackled the problem. What I’ll cover here are the basics to keep in mind when writing a comic script: collaboration, layout, and dialogue.
Collaboration
If you are lucky enough to have an artist assigned to work on the project with you, your job becomes much more manageable. The comic script is a list of instructions for the artist, and any artist can tell you how best to write instructions for them. My experience has been that artists produce their best work when they have some kind of creative input, so I suggest that your comic script leave room for the artist to bring their creativity to the project….
Philip Pullman has revealed he will tell the final part of Lyra Silvertongue’s story in The Rose Field, which will come out this autumn.
It has been six years since a book about Lyra has been published – and 30 since readers first encountered her in Northern Lights, the first in Pullman’s His Dark Materials children’s fantasy trilogy. The bestselling novels, which have since been adapted into a TV seriesby the BBC, take place across a multiverse and feature “dæmons” – physical manifestations of a person’s soul that take the form of animals.
The Rose Field will be the third volume in the author’s The Book of Dust series, which expands on the His Dark Materials trilogy. It began in 2017 with La Belle Sauvage, set 12 years before Northern Lights, and continued with The Secret Commonwealth in 2019, set after the events of the original trilogy. This new book will pick up where that one left off, with Lyra alone in the ruins of a deserted city, where she has gone in search of her dæmon. Another important character from the previous books, Malcolm, has travelled towards the Silk Roads to look for Lyra.
(7) DENNIS MCCUNNEY OBITUARY. Dennis McCunney died April 29 after a long illness. He was a con-running fan who worked on numerous Northeast conventions, who lived in the New York City area. He chaired Philcon 1974, Philcon 1975 and Lunacon 34. He also worked on Albacon, Maltcon, and others. His specialties were facilities (hotel) and publications. He was part of the (unsuccessful) Philadelphia in 1977 Worldcon bid. He belonged to The Cult apa.
Mark Roth-Whitworth says: “One of my two oldest friends. We met in out late teens, long ago, in a universe far away. Lifelong fan, computer professional, hotel liaison for Philcon, and perhaps several other East Coast cons. Had a very Mark Twain look, before he started losing his hair to chemo. He’d been fighting cancer for several years.”
Twenty-one years ago he was a Guest of Honor at Capclave 2004. Alexis Gilliland’s bio for the souvenir book said in part:
Dennis McCunney is a tall and seriously lean man, and one of the very few fans who wears a suit and tie to conventions because the suit serves to bulk him up. Perhaps his mustache bulks up his face, or maybe he just wears it because it makes him look good….
[At Lunacons] Often he would sit with me in the bar, between interludes on his cellphone, and regale me with tales of the Lunarians, the small but contentious New York SF club of which he had been – for a time – a member, and how his efforts to create a lasting improvement in the arranging of Lunacon were like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the hill. He discussed the Lunarians together with their follies, fiascoes and ferocious fanfeuds, and perhaps a few other eff sounds as well.
As he was often trying to see that Lunacon ran smoothly in real time, much of what was on his mind was in the nature of who had dropped what ball, and why, with luck, it could be remedied while the con was still running. His triumphs being in the nature of getting the pocket program there on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning. Listening to his stories, it was amazing that he could be as calm about the situation as he appeared, but his philosophy seemed to be: “What is the best that can be accomplished in these circumstances?” Acting on that philosophy enabled him to serve as a highly effective troubleshooter of Lunacons, to the point where he earned the title of “Mr. Lunacon,” although it was never formally bestowed upon him. He worked on other conventions, of course, and it was always a pleasure to meet him at the Worldcon or elsewhere, especially when he wasn’t tasked with some super-urgent business that should have been done last week” In real – that is, mundane – life, he is an ubertechie, charged with making his company’s computers perform in a commercially viable manner….
(8) MEMORY LANE
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
April 29, 1981 — The Greatest American Hero: “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”
Forty-one years ago on this evening, The Greatest American Hero series served up the ever so sweet and rather nostalgic “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”. It starts off with Ralph, our sort of superhero, quitting twice after perceiving that he has failed badly.
Meanwhile one of the secondary characters tells Ralph that her friend wants to go to an appearance by John Hart, the actor who played the second version of the Lone Ranger. Ralph is excited because Hart is his childhood hero. Why am I not surprised?
Later in the episode, Ralph and Hart get to have a talk and Ralph realizes that society needs its heroes and decides to wear the suit again.
I watched a lot of the Lone Ranger when I was rather young and never realized that there were two actors in that role. And no, I never figured out the deal with the silver bullets. Obviously that version of the Old West didn’t have werewolves. Or did it?
And yes, it was very, very sweet to see one of the Lone Rangers sort of playing his role again. If only as a mentor.
The Greatest American Hero series is streaming currently on Peacock.
Curtis underrates the requirements of horror writing.
Rubes has need for an exceptionally large pair of handcuffs.
(10) IF I HAD A HAMMER. “Godzilla Hammer Now On Sale” reports ScifiJapan. So often these silly things turn out to be AI fakes, but since you can actually buy it on Amazon.com (among other places) I’m going with this one.
Godzilla’s foot has crushed many buildings and structures. Now you can recreate that scene by smashing a nail with the Godzilla Hammer.
Precision casting manufacturer Castem Co., Ltd. (Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, CEO: Takuo Toda) has released the Godzilla Hammer (ゴジラハンマー, Gojira Hanmā) – a powerful, one-of-a-kind tool, casted from a 3D scan of a real Godzilla movie suit.
Castem has 3D scanned the foot of the Godzilla suit that was actually used in the filming of the Toho classic GODZILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK (..Gojira Mosura Kingu Gidora Daikaijū Sōkōgeki, 2001) and obtained detailed data on the shape of the monster’s foot. The foot was then metallized in iron (dyed black) using the “lost wax method,” a precision casting method that can create particularly detailed, complex shapes in metal.
It perfectly replicates the legendary stomp of the King of the Monsters. Finished with a sleek black oxide coat and weighing 550g, this hammer has a heavy feel and lets you drive nails like Godzilla crushes cities. Turn it over and see the true sole of Godzilla’s foot—down to every epic detail!
Drive Nails Like Godzilla Crushes Buildings
Crafted from 3D Scan Data of the Actual Godzilla Used in Filming
Expertly Recreated in Metal Using Precision Casting
Attention, visionary science fiction writers! Amazing Stories is thrilled to announce the reopening of short story submissions for our popular weekly feature, beginning May 1, 2025.
This is your opportunity to share your most brilliant creations with the readers of Amazing Stories! We’re seeking exceptional stories (up to 10,000 words) that will transport, enthrall, and engage your imagination.
We offer $20 for original stories over 2500 words and $10 for shorter works or reprints. We’re looking for science fiction and especially hard science fiction!
Also worth noting, we’ll also be opening submissions later in 2025 for the special issue of Amazing Stories 100th Anniversary issue that will be published in 2026!
(13) LOST IN STARLIGHT. [Item by N.] Per Polygon, a teaser trailer for “Netflix’s first Korean original animated film…a sci-fi romance about two star-crossed lovers.” Lost in Starlight releases May 30.
When an astronaut leaves Earth for Mars, the vast infinite space divides star-crossed lovers in this animated romance that crosses the cosmos
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Rich Lynch, N., Lloyd Penney, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Seattle still has not shared with Worldcon members what the procedures will be for them to access and use the platform, only saying “We will host a practice session at a time and date to be announced to help the community get to know Lumi’s platform”.
The dates of the virtual Business Meetings were already announced in December.
Friday, July 4, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Sunday, July 13, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Saturday, July 19, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
Friday, July 25, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)
The committee says these meetings will run for up to three-and-a-half hours each.
The Business Meeting agenda will be released after the submission deadline of June 4, 2025.
Seattle Worldcon 2025 committee issued a press release today stating that four virtual business meeting sessions held in July will take the place of the in-person Worldcon business meeting. Currently the only business they expect to be taken up on site is announcing the site selection result. The first session will be held on the Fourth of July.
Seattle Worldcon 2025 Announcement: Building the Business Meeting’s Future–For Everyone!
Have you ever wondered about or wanted to participate in how the rules that govern the Worldcon, the Hugo Awards, and other aspects of WSFS get made? We do this at the business meeting. However: have you ever been unable to attend a business meeting session because your favorite author or panel is happening at the same time during the convention? Have you ever been unable to attend the convention, but still wanted to participate in the business meeting?
Fear not! We are excited to announce that this year we have developed a new process for the business meeting: a series of pre-convention, virtual meetings! Seattle Worldcon 2025 will host the business meeting virtually on four different dates prior to the convention: July 4, July 13, July 19, and July 25. These dates were chosen in order to accommodate as best as possible religious observance, work commitments, and time zone differences. Viewing of the meeting will be open to all; however, to participate in the meeting and vote on business will require an attending membership or virtual attending membership in the convention. Our business meeting chair, Jesi Lipp, has experience with hosting virtual business meetings and is excited to bring that wealth of knowledge to WSFS and Seattle Worldcon 2025 in order to expand access and to enfranchise groups historically unable to participate.
To help prepare everyone for this new step forward, Seattle Worldcon 2025’s WSFS team has planned additional events. If you are intimidated by the thought of the business meeting or you’ve wanted to propose a change but are not sure how, you can learn the ropes at one or both of the informational town halls we have lined up. The business meeting chair and WSFS division also anticipate having at least one practice session prior to the virtual meeting using the virtual meeting platform.
Please note that voting for site selection for the 2027 Worldcon will include in-person voting at the convention, and that the announcement of the site selection winner will be done in person at Seattle Worldcon 2025.
The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers is pleased to announce the second annual Wayward Wormhole, this time in New Mexico. Join us for the short story workshop to study with Arley Sorg and Minister Faust, or the novel workshop with Donald Maass, C.C. Finlay, and Cat Rambo.
Both intensive workshops will be hosted at the Painted Pony ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico. The short story workshop runs November 4-12, 2024, and the novel workshop runs November 15 through 24, 2024.
(2) EARLY ENTRY ON THE 2024 BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA. Linda Deneroff, Alexia Hebel, Kevin Standlee, and Kevin Black have submitted to the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting an amendment to the WSFS Constitution to restore “supporting” and “attending” to replace “WSFS Membership” and “Attending Supplement”.
Short Title: The Way We Were
Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution by striking out and inserting the following:
Moved: To replace WSFS Membership with Supporting Membership wherever it appears in the Constitution, and to replace Attending Supplement with Attending Membership, including all similar variations of the words (e.g., WSFS Memberships, WSFS members, attending supplement) to their grammatically correct replacements.
Proposed by: Linda Deneroff, Alexia Hebel, Kevin Standlee, and Kevin Black
Commentary: Since both terms involved the word “Membership” there has been a lot of confusion among people purchasing memberships who do not understand why they have to purchase a “second” membership, or why they have to buy a “WSFS membership” in the first place. Under the original terminology, the price of an attending membership was inclusive of the support price.
Any reimbursement restrictions could still remain in place, with the price of the supporting portion of the attending membership deducted from any refund.
(3) IF IT’S NOT MADE IN MIDDLE-EARTH, IT’S CRAP! “Why Do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?” While Atlas Obscura tries to say Tolkien had a lot to do with it, their evidence shows it’s not his books but the filmmakers who adapted them that are the greatest influence.
…Of course the original readers couldn’t hear what Tolkien’s creatures sounded like, but the intense focus he placed on developing their languages gave people a pretty good idea. “Tolkien was a philologist,” says Olsen.“This is what he did. He studied language and the history of language and the changing of language over time.”
Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures and histories to speak them, often taking inspiration from the sound of an existing language. In the case of the ever-present Elvish languages in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men and hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.
For the dwarves, who were meant to have evolved from an entirely separate lineage, he took inspiration from Semitic languages for their speech, resulting in dwarven place names like Khazad-dûm and Moria….
… However, the dwarves of the Lord of the Rings movies don’t speak with an Israeli accent, and the elves of Warcraft don’t have a Finnish inflection. This comes down to the differences between how Tolkien portrayed his fantasy races and how he imagined they should talk, and the readers’ interpretation….
There are a lot of movie series that made it through four or five entries as an unusual rotating showcase for different directors before giving in to the temptation to re-hire past successes. I still love the Alien and Mission: Impossible movies dearly, but they’ve also made me extra-grateful for the rare franchise that has managed to never repeat a director or major (human) cast member. I’m talking – for now – about the Predator movies, the B-movie little siblings to the classier, weirder, more thought-provoking A-list Alien. Only one is bad – the second Alien vs Predator match-up, nonsensically subtitled Requiem. All of the rest, where various badass aliens hunt various opponents (including Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Danny Glover, Olivia Munn, the xenomorph and Adrien Brody, among others) for sport, filter their premise through a different vision of monster-movie splendor. On one level, you always know what you’ll get: clicky noises, gory deaths, those triangle laser-sight things. Yet the specifics have plenty of wiggle room: should they be scary, funny or nasty? Action, horror or sci-fi? It’s a throwback to when movie franchises knew their place as fun programmers, rather than tentpole sagas. Alas, Dan Trachtenberg is about to become the first Predator director to return to the series. He did a great job with the entertaining Prey; it’s just a shame for the series to lose its constant one-and-done churn. For now, I’ll continue to savor those no-nonsense weirdos with the ugly mandibles and over-elaborate armor, and their accidental compatibility with B-movie auteurism. Jesse Hassenger
(5) THAT 70’S ART. This link assembles many examples of “Space Bar” themed examples of “70s Sci-Fi Art”. (And from later, too).
(6) JOHNNY WACTOR (1986-2024). Best known for his work in daytime TV, Johnny Wactor was reportedly killed by thieves on May 25. The New York Times’ summary shows he also had roles in several genre series.
Johnny Wactor, an actor best known for his role in “General Hospital,” was shot and killed on Saturday, reports said, amid what his family described as an attempted theft of a catalytic converter in Los Angeles.
Ms. Wactor said her son thought his car was being towed at first, and when he approached the person to ask, the person “looked up, he was wearing a mask, and opened fire.”
Mr. Wactor … also appeared in episodes of “Westworld,” “The OA” and “Station 19.”
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
May 27, 1934 – Harlan Ellison. (Died 2018.)
By Paul Weimer. Or, even though he has passed away, he still might sue me from beyond the grave, so Harlan Ellison® .
My reading of Harlan Ellison® was benefited to me thanks to my older brother, whom I have mentioned earlier in this space was mainly responsible for me to get into science fiction and fantasy, and his bookshelf were my early steps into the genre. As it so happened, he had a fair number of the extant Harlan Ellison® short story collections. So very early on in my SFF reading, I did come across “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” and other SFF stories of his. At that early age, I found few SFF short story writers that could match him.
Harlan Ellison at the ABA convention; Larry and Marilyn Niven behind him: Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
And I learned, thanks to the collections my brother had, that Harlan Ellison® wrote far more than SFF short stories. I’m not even talking about his movie or television scripts. Ellison is the first SFF author who I read non-SFF work by. I read The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. I read and reread his criticism of television and cinema and began to understand the wide range of his talent. When I discovered he wrote mimetic short stories, and horror short stories as well, there was a point that I wondered what Ellison didn’t excel at as a writer in the short form.
My favorite Harlan Ellison® is not “Mouth” because I think that is just too easy an answer. I have a fondness for the sadness of “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” and the tragic fate of the protagonist. “Jeffty is Five” breaks my heart every time I read it. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” moved me, even though I was too young to know it was a take on the Kitty Genovese murder.
I will reach more deeply and go with “Paladin”, which I saw first as the Twilight Zone episode “Paladin of the Lost Hour” and then later read the Hugo winning novelette. It’s a poignant story, with some of the sadness and gray veil that you find in some of Ellison’s work. It’s as if Harlan Ellison® is grabbing me by the collar and shouting. “Feel something, you coward. Feel something!”. The anger of raging against the dying of the light and being angry when people shoulder-shrug, give up, and shuffle along? I may not have ever met Harlan Jay Ellison®, but I think Paladin helps you feel just how powerful, angry, and potent a writer he was. Love him or hate him, his work could not and would not be ignored.
I think there are definite periods and waves of Harlan Ellison® ‘s work. And like another sui generis artist, David Bowie, you probably will find a wave or period of Harlan Ellison® that you will like best. Not all of his oeuvre worked for me, there is a definite band I like, and a narrower (but not narrow) band that I really like. This may be the consequence of his extensive oeuvre and constant ability to change and try and write new things, or rewrite old things in a new way. Restless, Angry, Raging. Potent.
I loved his cameo on Babylon 5 which he served as a creative consultant and wrote an episode “A View from The Gallery”. (Which may mean that we have Harlan Ellison® to thank for Lower Decks, which is to Star Trek that this episode is to the rest of Babylon 5.)
That, my friends, is the work of Harlan Ellison®
Harlan Ellison in 2014 at Creation event in Las Vegas.
(9) ANOTHER HARLAN TRIBUTE. Janis Ian marked Harlan Ellison’s 90th with this tribute on Facebook.
In my life, there have been very few colleagues who viscerally understand having been an “enfant terrible”. Even fewer that lived up to their promise. And even fewer who continued to be brave, and bold, fearlessly speaking out despite the consequences.
Today is the birthday of my late friend Harlan Ellison. A writer who completely understood what it was like for me at the age of 15, when “Society’s Child” became a hit. Unable to connect with most of my peers because of the experiences I was having, unable to much time with those I could connect with, who were always 5 to 10 years older and usually on the road.
Harlan understood better than most that Fame hadn’t changed me, it had changed the people around me. And he understood the impossibility of living up to the expectations placed on me because of my innate talent and ability.
He could be an unbelievable pain in the rear. He could be absolutely impossible. He could be rude and obnoxious and he did not suffer fools. God help you if you annoyed him. But to me, he was unfailingly courteous, generous, kind, and giving. I miss him more than I can say, and I regret the years I did not know him.
Marie Brennan has been publishing short SF and Fantasy (mostly Fantasy, I think) for a couple of decades, after winning the Asimov’s Undergraduate Award back in 2003. (That’s an award which spurred some excellent careers over time — writers like Rich Larson, Marissa Lingen, Eric Choi, and Seth Dickinson are also among the past winners.)…
…The two books [Cold-Forged Flame, and Lightning in the Blood] concern Ree, whom we meet “coming into existence” as Cold-Forged Flame opens. She has no idea of her name, only a dim sense of her abilities (she is a warrior, for one thing) and of her character (suspicious, prickly) — but also aware that she is bound to do what the nine people who have summoned her ask. After some debate, she learns what these people want: she must go and bring back a vial of blood from the cauldron of the Lhian. And, in exchange, they offer her her freedom — and, but only after the fact, what knowledge they have of her … history. To tell too much in advance would harm her, they suggest….
…In Appendix C of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien explained the in-universe origin of the surname Gamgee. It came from the family’s ancestral village of Gamwich, which meant “game village” in the language of the hobbits. Over time, the name Gamwich evolved into Gamidge and later to Gamgee. This was one of many examples of the great amount of thought and effort that went into even the tiniest worldbuilding details of The Lord of the Rings. However, this backstory was a retroactive explanation that Tolkien came up with long after settling on the name Sam Gamgee for his story’s deuteragonist. The real-world basis for Sam’s surname was more unusual, and its origins predated Tolkien’s conception of Middle-earth.
Gamgee is a real — albeit uncommon — surname. In fact, in 1956, a man named Sam Gamgee wrote a letter to Tolkien after learning that a character in The Lord of the Rings shared his name. Tolkien was surprised and delighted by this coincidence. Since the real Sam had not read the novel for himself, Tolkien assured him that the fictional Sam was “a most heroic character, now widely beloved by many readers” and offered to send him a copy of the book. In Tolkien’s response, he also explained the reason that he chose to use the name. It was a long story that began with a famous surgeon: Dr. Joseph Sampson Gamgee.
Born in 1828, Joseph Gamgee made major strides in the field of aseptic surgery, the practice of ensuring that a doctor’s hands and tools remain sanitary during medical procedures….
(12) WOLFE PACK ON LOCATION. Black Gate has Bob Byrne’s newest installment of “Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone”: “Welcome to Kanawha Spa – The Wolfe Pack 2024 Greenbrier Weekend”. He joined the Wolfe Pack for a descent on the West Virginia resort featured in Too Many Cooks.
…Trish [Parker] is the resident Greenbrier historian. She is also a Wolfe fan! She gave a really cool presentation that talked about the Greenbrier, the logistics of of other locations (Barry Tolman was NOT going to make that court session he was pressing to be at), and other related information.
I loved it! It was really neat. Especially as she knew the story. I really enjoyed it. She took a couple questions and got a healthy round of applause.
Intelligence Guided by Experience – A question I heard more than once over the weekend was, “Did Rex Stout stay here before he wrote the book?” While the thought seemed to be, ‘Probably, as he knew the place pretty well.’ it’s unknown. The records from that early have been lost over the years. No proof he had been to the Greenbrier….
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Rob Jackson, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
The WSFS Mark Protection Committee, chaired by Donald E. Eastlake III, issued the following press release on February 25.
The World Science Fiction Society (www.wsfs.org, WSFS) is an unincorporated non-profit association whose activities include the annual awarding of the Hugo Awards via the selected World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) each year. WSFS, through its Mark Protection Committee (MPC), manages Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), a non-profit corporation that holds intellectual property on behalf of WSFS, which previously issued a Press Release on January 30 addressing some of these issues.
The WSFS MPC takes very seriously the recent complaints about the 2023 Hugo Award process and comments made by persons holding official positions in the MPC. In connection with these concerns, the MPC notes the following. There may be actions taken or to be taken that are not in this announcement.
Dave McCarty has resigned as a Member of the WSFS MPC. The MPC has elected Bruce Farr to fill the remainder of Dave McCarty’s term until the 2024 WSFS Business Meeting. Thereby Mr. Farr automatically became a voting member of the WIP Board of Directors (BoD).
Kevin Standlee has resigned as Chair of the WSFS MPC and Donald Eastlake has been elected Chair of the WSFS MPC. Notwithstanding his resignation as Chair of both the WSFS MPC and the WIP BoD, Mr. Standlee remains a WSFS MPC Member and WIP BoD Director.
The Hugo Award Marketing Committee (HAMC) of the WSFS MPC has been dissolved and its activities transferred to the WSFS Marketing Committee, an advisory board to the WIP BoD. At this time those activities include the management of the WSFS.org, Worldcon.org, TheHugoAwards.org, and NASFiC.org web sites.
To avoid any possibility of confusion, note that the “Tianwen Program” is not a part of WSFS and has not been approved or endorsed by the WSFS MPC or WIP.
Minutes of the special meetings of the WIP BoD held on January 28 and 30 and minutes of the meeting of the WSFS MPC on January 30 are posted here.
Please note that each year’s Worldcon is run by a separate organization which administers the Hugo Awards for that year. The Chengdu 2023 Worldcon has asked that any specific questions about the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards be sent to hugoteam@chengduworldcon.com. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon will be administering the 2024 Hugo Awards and can be contacted at hugohelp@glasgow2024.org. For media enquiries on other topics related to MPC or WIP, you may contact info@thehugoawards.org.
“World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC”, “Lodestar Award”, “The Hugo Award”, the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award Rocket are service marks of Worldcon Intellectual Property, a California non-profit corporation managed by the Mark Protection Committee of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society. You can contact the WSFS Mark Protection Committee at mpc@wsfs.org.
