Category Archives: Pixel Scroll

Pixel Scroll 8/19/26 It’s An Illiad Wind That Blows No Good

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(1) READERLESS DIGESTION. Brian Keene’s blog for “8/18/26” ends with a provocative question:

…You probably remember how the generative AI companies — to get around pesky authors complaining that their copyrighted works have been used without their consent or financial renumeration to train the LLMs — have begun buying massive quantities of rare and out-of-print books, stripping the spine to make them easily scannable, and feeding those into the LLMs instead.

Well, some journalists placed a tracker on a shipment of rare books that they suspected had been purchased for such a thing. The shipment ended up in Las Vegas at Amazon’s VGT3 facility — where Amazon is training their own AI.

If Amazon — a company that got its start selling and shipping books — is now buying massive quantities of rare books to feed to their machine god, what then are they doing with the books any indie author or small press uploads to their KDP division…?

(2) IMPERFECT PERFECTION. Carline Tromp leads readers into “Adventures in Utopia” in The Dial.

…In the early days, utopias were generally located on our own planet, in places as yet undiscovered, or which were so far away that anything was possible. In his essay The Island at the End of the World: New Zealand and Other Utopias (2026), Eirik Høyer Leivestad explores how New Zealand long served a similar function. The Europeans who “found” the island projected numerous fantasies onto it, from the myth of the noble savage to the idea that it could become a socialist paradise.

As more and more of the planet was mapped, these other worlds were relocated either underground or to outer space, as Margaret Atwood notes in In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2012). As a result, the notion of utopia became increasingly associated with the sci-fi genre, while the idea of creating a perfect social order here on earth was corrupted by totalitarian regimes. This may be another reason why dystopias are more common in contemporary literature than utopias: We are wary of societies utterly without discord — we suspect repression, surveillance, dungeons.

There is something totalitarian about utopias, something already latent in More. They are uncompromising and absolute, and they demand sacrifice. Even Ursula Le Guin’s Anarres, which is haunted by the shadow of unfreedom. Le Guin was an anarchist, but she wasn’t naïve, and she understood that no form of governance would be able to fully eradicate the human tendency to abuse power. The anticapitalist utopia in The Dispossessed is imperfect, but the book is mind-expanding, opening up new ways to think about what’s possible….

(3) WESTFAHL MEDICAL UPDATE. [Item by Gary Westfahl.]

On the morning of August 17, I experienced  a terrible fall, resulting in a huge gash on my forehead that makes me look a bit like Frankenstein; I also had some small neck fractures, but no surgery was required, as they are expected to heal by themselves. I was able to return home on August 18, but I will have to wear a neck brace for 6 to 8 weeks, which will obviously affect my productivity and communications with colleagues.

It has been observed that the true key to longevity is avoiding falling, and for the last three years I have been walking with extreme care so that I wouldn’t fall. On August 17, my luck ran out.

(4) GRASPING REALITY. Kameron Hurley contemplates “Why A Copy is Insufficient”.

…As someone whose day job career has been masticated and spat out by the LLM machine, this was on my mind when I picked up Molly Tanzer’s And Side by Side They Wander, about a ragtag group of misfits trying to pull off a heist to get humanity’s original art back from the aliens that took it in exchange for giving us all world peace and prosperity.

That’s right: an end to all sickness and horror, and all you have to do is give up your art.

Oh, the aliens said, you can still have COPIES of it. We’ll make you wonderful copies, all the copies you could want! You’ll never be able to tell the difference! But the real works of art, including the monuments, the architecture made by real human hands, we’re taking all of the originals. That’s the bargain you’re making.

It sounds like a wonderful deal, doesn’t it?

Every work day, I’m asked to negotiate output with a program that has illegally sucked up all the output of the world’s greatest artists and thinkers (and the least great, too, and mostly, the average), including my own, and reassemble it according to what ends up being the averages. I am told that someday this spicy autocorrect will transform the world, though what exactly it’s transforming it into is as yet unclear. Month by month, the output gets more and more sophisticated. It can render short videos. It can design powerpoints according to programmed specifications. It can wring out an ad that sounds exactly like an ad. It can hoover up all the data from your various software programs and offer advice on what it all means. About 20% of the time, what comes out is still garbled, incorrect; the more input it has, the more it makes things up. But it has given CEOs everything they ever wanted, and that is a “worker” who does exactly what they ask, and never talks back, and praises them for every one of their ideas.

It’s unsuprising, then, that with the arrival of that technology came the bloodbath in human creator jobs. Many of them bullshit jobs, don’t get me wrong. Designers complain endlessly about spending 12 hours every day, day in and day out, making powerpoints. Writing SEO-optimized articles is excrutiating. I have spent literally months of my life writing and designing websites that never actually launched, or that got shut down a year later. All gone, tears in the rain.

The internet was already filling up with trash made to be consumed by Google and its ilk, not actual humans.

The pace of that output has accelerated 10,000%….

(5) MESSAGE IN DISGUISE. Dave Freer’s “Prometheus YA Special Award Acceptance Speech” has been posted at Mad Genius Club.

… You see: STORM-DRAGON was a book designed for a specific purpose, with a particular end in mind. It was that quite despicable thing, which, honestly has damaged reading in general, and YA/middle grade in particular. I confess: STORM-DRAGON IS ‘Message-fiction’.

 Yes: Message fiction – which, I suspect, handled as it often is with the dexterity of a steam-shovel for micro-surgery, has put more people, particularly young boys, off reading than anything else.

So: knowing that full-well, and regarding the message-dripping offerings of much of modern children’s and young adult publishing like Hakarl… Ah. A digression: I must explain Hakarl, to those of you lucky enough not know it. Hakarl is an Icelandic dish made from basking sharks, which are toxic, because of the level of vitamin A. Traditionally it was caught in autumn, buried under the beach shingle for winter, dug up, cut into rubbery jelly blocks that tastes like it smells, which is a delectable combination fermented fish and ammonia-floor cleaner. It’s not poisonous any more, I just wished it was when I had to eat it politely. I believe you can get used to it, especially with enough Brennvin.  But it’s probably not the ideal choice for an introduction to food… So: what talked me into fiction that’s first purpose was to promote a message? I’m well known for saying that messages have to be so disguised that readers get them without even being aware of it, that if it detracts from the book, it is the message that must go.

It was what that message was. It’s a message I believe passionately in, that I believe I have promoted all my life, that I believe is of vital importance to our species. Yeah, like most jokers, when you peel the layers back, I’m a very serious guy. This is something that is of fundamental importance. This is Prometheus’s gift of fire.

The message is: READING IS FUN. READING FICTION ESPECIALLY IS AWESOME….

(6) PODCAST PREVIEWS LACON V. The Incomplete Worldcon Podcast’s fifth episode is a “News Break”. Sarah Gulde, Isabel Shechter and DJ Switch will soon be on their way: “We’re less than two weeks away and packing has BEGUN! We’ve got tips for what to bring, how to manage your schedule, and where you can find us at LACon V NEXT WEEK!”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 19, 1921 — Gene Roddenberry. (Died 1991.)

By Paul Weimer: Yes, the Great Bird of the Galaxy (a nickname given to him by given to him by Associate Producer Robert H. Justman.).

Gene Roddenberry

We can start with Star Trek of course, since TOS is where I started to engage with his work, but he was far more than only Star Trek, but Star Trek would be a legacy enough (the original series, the movies, the Next Generation, the animated series (which I came late to), and on and on. An optimistic view of the future that wasn’t always adhered to, and eventually was discarded to a degree (looking at you, Section 31) but then was somewhat reconstituted in the most recent shows, such as Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and the 31st century seasons of Discovery. The idea that we can come together, solve our problems, fix our shit, and go and explore the universe is a powerful story, a powerful myth, and Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek brought that to light and to the public. 

Roddenberry, of course was beyond Star Trek. Somewhere along the line I came across his Genesis II and Planet Earth… although I managed to see Planet Earth first. I was frustrated a bit that I had missed Alex Hunt’s origin story of how he got frozen and then revived by a new civilization building on the ruins of the old. I really did like both series and the implications of a rewilded Earth where discoveries of old and new could happen with the help of the worldwide subway network.  But neither pilot took off and the series idea died, there. It’s a pity, one can see seeds of a number of lighter post-apocalyptic RPGs in the wreckage of the failed Genesis II/Planet Earth project, and maybe had it taken off, we’d take the problems confronting humanity a lot more seriously. 

I did watch some of Andromeda, which explored the idea in a different way, having a different Dylan Hunt as a man out of time trying to bring peace and order to the galaxy. Roddenberry didn’t live to see Andromeda come to fruition and I wonder what he might have thought of it. I thought it had some good ideas, even given the relatively unpleasantness of the actor who portrayed Hunt.

Earth: Final Conflict had some interesting ideas at first and I mentally filed it as a more benevolent form of the series V but I fell off the wagon a couple of seasons in, and have not gone to try and revisit it, since. 

I think that maybe with the exception of Genesis and Planet Earth, none of the rest of his work had the potential to be the mythic creations that Star Trek became. Even aside from all of that, it is unmistakable that Roddenberry changed television and science fiction history through Star Trek and his other projects. What started as “Wagon Train to the stars” helped pave the way for a lot more space opera on the screen. Would Lucas have even conceived of doing Star Wars if not for Star Trek? There is definitely a big what-if, if Roddenberry had never managed to bring Star Trek to screen, had not promoted and encouraged SF on television with his other projects. Great Bird of the Galaxy indeed. That’s probably a much poorer timeline.

But I am glad we live in this timeline, when and where he did.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) WOULD BE CHEAP AT TWICE THE PRICE. Silicon Canals remembers – “In 1977, George Lucas agreed to a lower director’s fee on Star Wars in exchange for keeping the merchandising and sequel rights, a trade 20th Century Fox executives considered an easy win because nobody thought movie toys would sell — those rights are now estimated to be worth more than $20 billion”.

… What happened next arrived faster than anyone could manufacture for it. Star Wars opened in May 1977 and immediately overwhelmed every projection anyone had made about it, and the toy company holding the license, Kenner, found itself in the strange position of owning the rights to the year’s most in-demand toy with no actual toy to put on shelves in time for Christmas. Kenner had reportedly held off on tooling up a full production line because, like Fox, it hadn’t expected the demand to materialize.

Its solution became one of the more memorable footnotes in toy industry history. A Kenner executive, Bernard Loomis, devised what’s now remembered as the “Early Bird Certificate” — a $7.99 cardboard package containing artwork of the planned figures, a display diorama, some stickers, and, crucially, a mail-in certificate promising that four actual action figures would arrive in the mail sometime between February and June of 1978. Kenner capped the campaign at 500,000 of these effectively empty boxes, and parents lined up for them that Christmas anyway, betting on a mail-in promise because an actual figure didn’t exist yet to sell….

(10) LEAP GEAR. “Protestors Dressed as Gandalf Demand Peter Thiel Leave Argentina, Go Back to the Abyss” reports Gizmodo.

One does not simply walk into Argentina. Despite his significant influence over the Trump administration, tech billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel has been putting down roots in Javier Milei’s far-right, anarcho-capitalist Argentina, apparently worried that things might go sideways in the States. At least some Argentinians would prefer he go back home, and they decided to send him a message by protesting outside of Thiel’s residence while dressed as Gandalf the Grey.

According to Argentinian newspaper Clarín, the demonstration took place on Monday and featured a dozen or so people draped in long cloaks, wizard hats, and faux beards who made their way to Thiel’s neighborhood with signs bearing slogans like “You shall not pass, you son of a bitch.” Per Clarín, the group also jumped up and down while chanting, “Whoever doesn’t jump owns Palantir and won’t be able to live in Argentina.”

The group’s inclination that Thiel take a hike comes as the billionaire continues to dig his claws into Argentina. Per the New York Times, the scariest member of the PayPal mafia has already met with Milei and his ministers, who were apparently thrilled to have him. Milei described their meeting as “wonderful,” according to the Buenos Aires Times….

(11) DEEP BREATH. The New Yorker plumbs “The Mystery of Dark Oxygen”.

In March, I accompanied an international team of scientists on an expedition to one of the deepest places that humans have ever visited, a few hours outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Before sunrise, we drove to the entrance of the Moab Khotsong gold-and-uranium mine, joining a line of workers who were relieving the night shift. Security was tight; for years, mining companies have struggled to keep out illegal miners called zama-zamas, who sneak underground and collect ore at great danger to themselves. When guards finally cleared us and our gear, we walked through rotating gates into what resembled a suburban office park. At its center was a boxy concrete tower—a mine shaft that would carry us nearly two miles down into the earth.

The scientists had come not for precious metals but for something even more elusive: what they call dark oxygen. On Earth’s surface, plants and algae produce plentiful oxygen from sunlight and water, allowing us to live and breathe. At one time, scientists didn’t think that significant quantities of free oxygen, or O2, would be found anywhere else on the planet, in part because O2 reacts aggressively with other elements. “O2 is way less abundant in the universe than diamond,” Emil Ruff, a microbial ecologist and the expedition lead for the trip, told me. But, over the past few years, small quantities of free oxygen have been detected in a range of deep places, far removed from the light of the sun. Ruff and his colleagues hoped to collect new samples of ancient water in the mine. They suspected that oxygen was playing an unrecognized role in powering underground life….

… If such a useful molecule was abundant underground, the researchers reasoned, then the deep biosphere might be even more diverse and widespread than expected. And whatever was generating dark oxygen might also be found on planets or moons beyond Earth. “We started digging,” Ruff told me. His team soon discovered trace amounts of oxygen in deep groundwater from around the world. They found DNA from aerobes—microbes capable of using oxygen—in places that sunlight could never reach. Other microbes seemed to produce their own dark oxygen, perhaps to extract energy from hydrocarbons such as methane, much as drag racers inject nitrous oxide into their engines to boost horsepower. Last year, Ruff and five other investigators won a multimillion-dollar grant from nasa to extend their investigations on a sort of dark-oxygen world tour. Moab Khotsong was their first and deepest stop….

(12) WEAR IT WELL, AMELIA EARHART. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Smithsonian exhibits “Amelia Earhart’s flight suit”.

Pilot Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) earned revenue by carrying philatelic materials on her flights. Earhart owned and wore this leather wool-lined flight suit manufactured by Arnold, Constable & Company, of Paris and New York. Such suits were essential for long-distance flights. Early airplanes offered scant protection from the elements, especially the icy cold at altitudes of 20,000 feet.

NPR has the suit’s backstory: “From cockpit to catwalk with aviation icon Amelia Earhart”.

Amelia Earhart was famous as an early aviatrix. Her flight suit is part of a bigger story about the history of American fashion and celebrity.

…ALISON BAZYLINSKI: She borrowed a man’s flight suit for that to stay warm. And actually, when she arrives over in the U.K., she has department stores calling her and messaging her, asking to dress her.

LOMBARDO: Alison Bazylinski, an assistant curator at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, says soon after that flight, the department store Arnold Constable made Earhart a brown leather jumpsuit lined with wool.

BAZYLINSKI: It has two large cargo pockets above the knees.

LOMBARDO: A big collar, asymmetrical buttons going up one side and a big belt. It was cool.

BAZYLINSKI: There’s a record of it from about two weeks later, saying that three people had purchased it for $175 per suit.

LOMBARDO: About $3,400 today.

BAZYLINSKI: This was a very deliberate marketing choice on their part, particularly at a time when the – the American fashion industry is really taking off during this time period, and it’s with sportswear.

LOMBARDO: Clothes that were stylish but not fussy. Women’s Wear Daily guessed that the other buyers were pilots, too, who needed something warm to wear in the sky. Things got icy when Earhart crossed the Atlantic alone a few years later. Here’s what she told the BBC….

In case you didn’t recognize the reference: “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight sung (here) by Jim Kweskin”

And here’s song writer/music info: A popular song from 1939. Words and music by Dave McEnery. Arranged by Lindsay McPhail. Sung by Laurence Rubenstein. Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne.

(13) TRAILER PARK. “DUNE 3 Official NEW Teaser Trailer (2026)”. In theaters December 18.

Paul Atreides, now Emperor Muad’Dib, must come to terms with his immense power while battling political enemies and a conspiracy in his entourage. As House Atreides faces collapse, the real danger looms for Paul’s lover Chani and her unborn heirs.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/18/26 A Circle Of Ent Leaves Made Into A Gateway

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(1) MASS BOOK THEFT FOLLOW-UP. L.W. Currey Inc. has sent an additional alert to their customers about the major book theft they suffered. The original report estimated $250,000 worth of books have been stolen.

The suspect is a thin male, approximately 6’4″ dressed in black and wearing pointed-toe dress shoes approximately size 14.

The thief is interested in Arkham House books, vampire fiction, Hugo-Award winners, and high spots in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with a particular focus on Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Hope Hodgson, Robert Jordan, H. P. Lovecraft, David Lindsay, Lewis Padgett, Clark Ashton Smith, Bram Stoker, and H. G. Wells.

A complete list of the stolen books with pictures may be accessed here.

If you have any information potentially related to this theft, please contact Investigator Derek T. Brassard of the New York State Police at [email protected] and reference case # NY2601006675

(2) THEY WORE THE UNIFORM. “8 Famous Science-Fiction Writers and Actors Who Served” – Military.com discusses Roddenberry, Serling, Vonnegut, Ackerman, Nimoy, Asimov, Heinlein, and Ellison.

Gene Roddenberry

More than 20 years before Gene Roddenberry sent the USS Enterprise across the galaxy, he was trying to keep a B-17 from running off an island runway in the South Pacific.

On Aug. 2, 1943, Roddenberry was piloting Yankee Doodle during a takeoff from Espiritu Santo when the bomber failed to build enough speed. He aborted, but the B-17 ran off the runway and broke apart in the jungle. Two crew members died. Roddenberry survived.

He went on to create Star Trek, which turns 60 on Sept. 8, 2026. His path from the military to science fiction was unusual, but he was far from alone.

Rod Serling and Kurt Vonnegut carried combat experiences into their writing. Leonard Nimoy made Army training films. Forrest J Ackerman edited a base newspaper. Some of these men had already started writing or working in science fiction before they enlisted, but each served before producing the work for which he became best known….

(3) DOES AI DESERVE A VOICE HERE? J. Michael Straczynski offers “Fair Replies to Fair Questions Regarding The AI Essay Discussion for I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”.

Following my post about having a (very) short addendum from an AI system discussing what is arguably the first story actually about AI, a number of folks posted concerns and questions in response. The majority of those replies (minus some of the more colorful bits of invective) are well-considered, fair, and deserve a respectful response. So let’s have the conversation….

…We were nearly finished editing the solo book for Mouth, and I was rereading it one last time with an eye toward the fact that, as near as can be told, this was the first story about something we could recognize today as AI, being published at a time when AI is an actual thing.

And it felt remiss to be in that situation without commenting upon it, and finding some way to address it.

Then a thought occurred.

In the essays and commentaries contained within his books, when Harlan made a lengthy observation about someone, he would invite them to contribute a counter-argument, which he would then include in his essay.

And I wondered if something like that could be done now.

So I fed the story into ChatGPT.

To be clear on this one point, because in fairness some have raised it: as demonstrated and verified by the Anthropic lawsuit, Mouth was digitized and dumped into the AI/LLM void a long, long, very long time ago. It’s already all over the place, otherwise I would have refrained. Nothing was given that was not already there….

(4) CHARLAINE HARRIS WITHDRAWS FROM LACON V. The LAcon V Worldcon committee announced on Facebook today that “Due to personal circumstances Charlaine Harris is no longer able to attend LAcon V. We know this is disappointing news but are sure you join with us in wishing her and her family all good wishes.”

(5) WHAT IS STAR TREK’S FATE? “Paramount+ Head Of Originals Jane Wiseman Talks Programming Strategy: Q&A” at Deadline.

DEADLINE: What is your plan for the Star Trek franchise? It is at crossroads with Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy ending and no new series greenlit. If I heard you correctly, you said that something is coming. Yes?

WISEMAN: Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise. And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development.

(6) TREK ALREADY MIA. Coincidentally, author Kristine Kathryn Rusch had this to say about the franchise on Facebook yesterday.

Wow. Just saw the promo pix for the latest Trek Strange New Worlds episode and thought, “Well, another episode I’m not going to watch.” So far the series is batting zero for me. I doubt I’ll watch any more episodes. So sad. I have no idea why they decided to do gimmicky things instead of telling Trek stories. And there I was, sad there would be no Trek after their next season. Well…there’s no Trek now. Sigh.

(7) THE FUTURE LESS TRAVELED. Kameron Hurley discusses “Who We Were in the Old World”. Here’s an excerpt.

… There’s a reason I think of the world prior to 2016 as a different world. A more naive world, for me. The pace and presence of digital propaganda was known, and had been experimented with for a decade, but it was 2016 when it honed itself to a fine point. I remember telling a group of folks at Bookcon that watching Russia rear up out of the sea like a forgotten dragon was a surreal experience. But it was of course much more complicated than that. What a nice, tidy narrative that would have been! No, digital marketing had now matured, and been effectively weaponized by all sorts of actors for all sorts of reasons, and the only way back was to heavily regulate it.

That wasn’t going to happen for a long time. It made too many people rich and powerful.

The rise of LLMs was similarly devastating to my own worldview. There was a world, and my place in it. And then there… wasn’t.

I remember learning that a direct report had been secretly recording our calls with an LLM notetaker, and the feeling of sorrow and betrayal and – worse! – the feeling of being such an ancient relic that this had never even occured to me. It was overwhelming, this feeling of being a naive fossil.

The world was moving. I was working like I lived in the old world.

We were all being recorded. All being manipulated by social platforms. All being watched by Ring cameras. I had a moment when I realized all those 80s dystopia films and books I’d read had prepared me for this, of course. This was the future predicted back then, the glaring warning: stop this, or you’ll get that.

I am living in that.

Which takes me back to thinking about who I was, and the story of who I was, and how that doesn’t work anymore.

I’ve had readers revisit Geek Feminist Revolution, or read it for the first time, and what first strikes them, looking back, is how naive and hopeful it is.

“They are angry because we’re winning! This is the last gasp of a dying world! We are going to WIN!!!”

And while that’s true, and I stand by it – there is always a better future for someone, somewhere – I neglected to realize just how bad that backlash would get before we came through to the other side.

The world does not change without horror and bloodshed and madness, no matter what it’s turning into….

(8) TRUE CRIME AUTHOR DROPPED BY PUBLISHER. The Guardian reports “Christopher Berry-Dee dropped by publisher after allegations of abuse made against him”.

The main publisher of the bestselling true crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee has dropped the author after a Guardian investigation into allegations of violence and sexual abuse against him, which he denies. Waterstones has also removed his books from sale.

“We are shocked and appalled by the very serious allegations relating to Christopher Berry-Dee, and our thoughts are with those affected,” said the publisher Bonnier Books in a statement to the Guardian.

“Bonnier Books UK will no longer publish Christopher Berry-Dee, we will not work with him on any future projects, and we are terminating all existing agreements”, it continued. “There are practical steps entailed in unwinding longstanding contracts, including those involving third parties, but we are working through them as quickly as we can. We will also be removing our existing stocks from the market.”

An investigation published on Saturday detailed multiple allegations of abuse by Berry-Dee, including domestic violence and sexual assault of a 13-year-old student attending his art school. Berry-Dee refused to be interviewed for the piece, citing health issues, but denied the allegations: “I have not once committed any of the crimes you accuse me of.”

Berry-Dee, 78, is the UK’s top-selling author of true crime. His books, including Talking With Serial Killers, draw on interviews with murderers and have sold nearly 1m copies.…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 18, 1925 — Brian Aldiss. (Died 2017.)

By Paul Weimer: I first came across the work of Brian Aldiss as an editor in a used copy of an anthology that I fell hard for. That anthology was Galactic Empires, a seminal anthology of SF stories, a two-volume set of over two dozen stories set in such realms, with authors ranging from Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson to A.E. Van Vogt and Clifford Simak. The age of the stories spanned from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, showing not only a wide range of themes and ideas revolving around Galactic Empires, their rises, heights and falls, but also showed the breadth of style changes in the genre over that period. It was a snapshot of the subgenre, right at the time that Star Wars was dominating the cinema and changing SF forever, and a look backward to the roots of the subgenre as well.

Brian Aldiss

I decided after reading it that I needed to learn more about Aldiss’ work. So through the rest of the 80’s and 90’s, I started tracking down his work in used bookstores where and how I could. I hit upon the Helliconia books, which is the original Long Season books (sorry, Mr. Martin) and do a better job of showing how civilization rises and falls and adapts to such long and often tumultuous seasons. The books also lack a central protagonist because they jump forward hundreds of years at a time, as well. So these books worked for me on the worldbuilding much more than characterization or plotting. 

I remember trying to read Report on Probability A and bouncing off of it, and I have not dared to try it again. Maybe too literary and experimental for me? I found much better traction with the Hothouse stories, set on an Earth overrun with plantlife, and the few remaining humans looking for a way out of their increasingly restrictive circumstances. I thought of these stories a lot when reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Saturation Point, and I wonder how much he was influenced by those stories himself. Certainly, too, the far future of Cage of Souls feels like Aldiss’ Hothouse world in its positively feral jungles. 

But where I landed on Aldiss is where I began with him–criticism and editorial work. Billion Year Spree was the second book length piece of SF criticism I read (after Panshin’s Heinlein in Dimension) and it opened up my eyes to the possibility of the form. Was it a germ for me to eventually do my own reviews and genre work? Maybe!  As far as his editorial anthology work, I came across a bunch in used bookstores, his Year’s Best Science Fiction works. Hell’s Cartographers showed me the person behind a number of writers of stories I had read. 

I always have had a feeling, no matter what I read from Aldiss, be it a story, an anthology he edited, a piece of criticism, that Aldiss had a sense of the SF field in a way that was irreplicable. And that he wanted to share this sense with readers, to express what he was seeing and feeling.  He had his fingers on the pulse of science fiction–where it had been, where it was now, and where it might be going. Yes, the SF field was smaller then, and it might be impossible, now. But the breadth of his ability, from writing it, curating it to criticizing it, showed his love and understanding, warts and all, of the field. 

Finally of course, his story “Supertoys last all summer long” was a basis for the Spielberg/Kubrick movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I did go down and track down the story, afterwards, and found it and its sequel, both of which have elements in the movie.  And the end of Supertoys When Winter Comes hit me in the feels in a way that the movie doesn’t quite land. I can see how Kubrick and Spielberg tried to capture the spirit of the stories, but didn’t quite, in the end, succeed. But the work of Aldiss remains unblemished, important, and strong.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SIMAK KEEPS THE FAITH. Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations brings us “Exploration Log 16: Clifford D. Simak’s speech ‘The Face of Science Fiction’ (1953)”.

Clifford D. Simak’s speech “Face of Science Fiction” appeared in Minnesota Libraries, vol. XVII, no. 7. (September 1953). He originally gave it to the Minneapolis Branch Library staff. I have not found evidence that the speech appeared elsewhere or is anywhere online. I requested the article through the university library I’m affiliated with. I’ve included a transcription below…. 

… [SIMAK] I have never lost faith in science fiction. I have watched it grow and I believe it will grow still more. I am convinced that it is here to stay.

I am convinced, not because there are some thirty magazines on the stands, not because a hundred books or more of it are published each year, nor simply because it has invaded the movies, radio and television. What convinces me far more is that, out­side of the written and the spoken medium, it has expanded into what even now is a comparatively large industry. Toys, games, gadgets, scientific instruments of all kinds for the teen agers and wearing apparel for youngsters are now on sale – all with the science fiction motif. You have space hel­mets, space guns, space suits, spaceships, and dozens of other items selling at the dime store level. When a way of life reaches the dime store level it is my contention that it finally has arrived and has arrived to stay. At the moment, the science fiction toys and gadgets are on a par with the western para­phernalia which is offered the younger set, while science fiction itself, both in quantity published and, I would like to think, in quality of writing as well, has forged ahead of the western story and the whodunit….

(12) OTHERWISE AWARDS 2026 JURY. The Otherwise Motherboard has announced three of the six members of the Otherwise Awards 2026 Jury.

Gautam Bhatia (Chair) is an Indian SFF writer, reviewer, and editor. He is the author of THE FIFTH INFLECTION (Saga Press/Solaris 2027). Originally published in India as THE SENTENCE, the novel won the 2025 Ignyte Award for best adult fiction. His other novels include the duology THE WALL and THE HORIZON (HarperCollins India). He is also the co-ordinating editor of Strange Horizons, a Hugo Award-winning weekly, online magazine of SFF that is in its 27th year of existence. His critical and editorial work focuses on SFF from the global south, extractivism in SFF, anarchist SFF, and more. In his other life, he is a constitutional lawyer.

Abigail Nussbaum is a blogger and critic, former reviews editor of Strange Horizons, and a two-time winner of the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Scientist, Locus, io9, and others, and she contributes to the politics blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money. Her review collection Track Changes was published by Briardene Books in 2024.

Akankshya Abismruta (she/her) is an independent books & culture writer based in India. She writes for numerous Indian newspapers and several digital platforms, including Strange Horizons. She is interested in all things gender, illness and disability, and translation. She lives with multiple chronic conditions and invisible disability, and copes by reading stories that disrupt power structures. She is @geekyliterati on Instagram and @akankshya.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Three other jury members have asked not to be named publicly until the end of the jury process.

The jury is now considering works for the 2026 Awards, and will announce its decisions by late May 2027; we intend to celebrate Award winners at WisCon 2027.

A transparency note about naming jurors publicly:

In most past years, we’ve announced the name of the jury chair at the beginning of each year’s Awards cycle, but haven’t publicly named the members of the jury until the end of the process.

Last year and this year, we learned that some jurors want to be publicly named at the start of the cycle, and others don’t, for a mix of reasons (all sensible). So this year, we’re refining our process, and naming only the jurors who want to be named.

When we announce this year’s Awards around May 2027, we’ll also provide the names of all of the jurors.

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Lucasfilm Releases ‘LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian’ Trailer” — Animation World Network sets the frame.

Lucasfilm has released the official trailer for LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian, an all-new animated special that debuts exclusively on Disney+ September 2. In true LEGO special style, the show retells all three seasons of the landmark live-action series as a witty comedy, revisiting familiar Star Wars stories in new and unexpected ways for families and younger audiences.

Shelby Young, who voices the Anzellans and Jawas in the special and has voiced characters in animated Star Wars titles for years, debuted the trailer from the Star Wars stage at D23 this past Friday evening…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/17/26 I Have No Internet And I Must Stream

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(1) WSFA SMALL PRESS AWARD FINALISTS. The Washington (DC) Science Fiction Association (WSFA) has announced the finalists for the 2026 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction. See the list at the link.

(2) PREMIO IGNOTUS 2026 FINALISTS. The finalists for the Premio Ignotus 2026 (2026 Ignotus Awards) have been announced by Spain’s Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror.

(3) DISNEY TO ADD ‘VILLAINS LAND’. “Disney World’s Villains Land Gets Name, Backstory and Thrilling Ride Details” reports People.

The “Most Magical Place on Earth” is going dark!

Disney Imagineers shared new details about the long-awaited Villains land planned for Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom while onstage at the D23 convention in Anaheim on Saturday, Aug. 15.

“Villains land is one of the most ambitious lands we’ve ever created,” the Disney execs revealed. “It’s huge, on the scale of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and it’s completely immersive.”…

…Things got more intriguing from there, as Imagineers also confirmed the land’s two chill-inducing ride concepts.

The first, Imagineers promise, will be “thrilling coaster” inspired by Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, situated around her mountaintop fortress. Riders will race through the spiky brambles that encase the structure, which also seems to be the area’s central landmark.

The second attraction will take place in the catacombs beneath the Evil Queen’s lair, where the Magic Mirror from Snow While summons a slew of famous Disney villains to frighten all those who dare to enter.

Artwork for the ride shows Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Scar from The Lion King, Jafar from Aladdin and more, all surrounding what a wooden ride vehicle. (No details of that ride’s format were revealed.)….

…Because the land will bring together characters from many different worlds, the Imagineers also created an original story as to why they would all be in this one place: at the center of the dark forest that makes up Villains Land sits a wishing well filled with powerful dark magic they all wish to harness….

(4) SLOP TSUNAMI. “Sick of A.I. Slop? So Are Tech Giants” reports the New York Times. (Behind a paywall.)

…LinkedIn recently developed a “Seems like AI slop” button for users.LinkedIn

Across the internet, tech companies are undertaking a generative waste detox, overwhelmed in many cases by the same slop first made by possible by their own A.I. tools. Mobile messaging apps, restaurant review sites, scholarly archives and dating services are all rooting out or downplaying junk generated by A.I. — many relying on the same technology to pull off the purge.

People are tiring of A.I.’s effect on the environment and its pressure on jobs and mental health. A.I. slop is just another “festering wound,” said Aidan Walker, a content creator and researcher studying online trends for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a global affairs think tank.

“Users have gradually gotten more and more upset about it,” he said. “The climate of opinion has now recognizably shifted, so these companies are finally confronting these problems.”

Generative A.I. can produce increasingly realistic images, audio and videos, but only some of it qualifies as slop. Tech companies are largely targeting the kind of low-grade clickbait that is easy to make, spread, consume and forget — the fast fashion edging out couture, the pink slime subsuming the steak.

Unchecked, the synthetic swamp online could “crowd out human creativity, corrode cultural value and destabilize public discourse,” European researchers wrote last year.

Slop has become so prevalent that Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publisher, chose it as its word of the year in 2025. Deezer, a French streaming service, said this spring that nearly half of the tracks updated to its system each day were artificially generated, many of them never heard by users. A.I. generates more than a third of what is uploaded to Apple Music….

(5) REACHING BACK TO 1984. If Camestros Felapton feels his deep dive into Neuromancer needs to begin with a trip to a Thai shopping mall, then I’ll just have to trust his judgment: “Neuromancer”.

…It has always been a fallacy to judge a science fiction book by how accurately it predicts the future. Neuromancer fails as a piece of futurology in all sorts of ways, many of which would have been obvious even in 1984 if you thought about it. Yet, if you skip past the banks of pay phones in the airport or indeed the general lack of mobile phones, the book doesn’t feel dated even though the specifics (the USSR!) are wrong. In large part, it is because the book taps into what is now a familiar vibe, but also because it does anticipate how technology creeps into broader society. Everybody is just a little bit a cyborg in Neuromancer (and some people more than others), and crime and corporate shenanigans have also become enmeshed with data and technology. The specifics don’t match our current present, but that cyberisation of society does….

(6) NON-AI SLOP. BBC tries to figure out how “Movie that went viral for terrible animation becomes China box office hit”. (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

The low-budget film has started raking in ticket sales after going viral for its poor animation and complicated plot

It’s so bad, it’s become a box office hit.

Niu Lai, a low-budget animation film about a cow in a dream sequence has seen a huge jump in ticket sales after going viral for its confusing plot and terrible graphics.

It grossed just 7,705 yuan ($1,140; £843) in the first 10 days after its release, but has now made more than 11.4 million yuan, according to movie tracking site Mao Yan. That means it is holding ground against Hollywood blockbusters like The Odyssey and Spider Man: Brand New Day.

“You may regret for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don’t, you’ll regret it for life,” one popular social media post about the film said.

Other social media users have hailed the movie as the antidote to the AI slop that is taking over social media algorithms.

They are sharing clips praising Niu Lai’s “hand-crafted” method – a reference to the poor animation quality – as “proof” that its creators did not use AI.

“That’s some serious craftsmanship,” a Weibo user wrote.

Another social media user called it “pure handmade” and the biggest “dark horse” of the summer movie season.

Others say they are rooting for the movie because they desperately hope for a “bullish” stock market – a reference to the fact that the words “bull” and “cow” share the same character in Chinese.

“If the index reaches 4,000 tomorrow I will go to the cinema to support this movie,” one Weibo user wrote.

“It is a terrible movie but has a great name,” another comment linking the movie to stock investments said.

(7) JOEL DAVIS (1934-2026). Publisher Joel Davis, owner of Davis Publications, which founded Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and published it until it was sold to Dell Magazines in 1992, died July 11 at the age of 92. The local Westport Journal obituary is excerpted below: “Obituary: Joel Davis, publisher and Westporter”.

Longtime Westporter, noted publisher, former Westport Library president and Brown University trustee Joel Davis died peacefully on Saturday, July 11, after a short illness. He was 92.

After college Joel and his father Bernie founded Davis Publications. He was president and publisher for 40 years. At its peak they published 60 special interest magazines including Ellery Queen’s Mystery, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction, Income Opportunities, Sylvia Porter’s Personal Finance, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Analog.

Architectural Designs was launched, with his wife Carol as editor. One of Joel’s three sons, Jonathan, was brought in 20 years later to learn the business and eventually take it over. Jon evolved AD into an e-commerce leading business, selling home plans to builders and individuals.

Joel was proud that last year his grandson, Jared Davis, became the third generation CEO of AD.

Joel’s father co-founded Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in 1928, which meant that Joel and his family have had a key role in publishing for 98 years….

(8) HAYDEN PANETTIERE (1989-2026). Actress Hayden Panettiere, whose genre work included the TV series Heroes, died August 16. See The Hollywood Reporter: “Hayden Panettiere Dead: Heroes, Nashville, Scream Actress Was 36”.

…Panettiere earned her breakout role in 2006, playing the indestructible cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC sci-fi series Heroes. She starred on the series for four seasons.

She garnered more fame playing Juliette Barnes on the ABC series Nashville from 2012-18 and then as Kirby Reed in the Scream horror franchise….

…Panettiere’s credits also include the films I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009), Scream 4 (2011) and Scream VI (2023) and the title role in the 2011 Lifetime telefilm Amanda Knox….

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Lis Carey.]

G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen (Allen & Unwin, 2012)

By Lis Carey: Alif the Unseen takes us on a wild ride through life in a Middle Eastern city-state, cyber-duels between State Security and gray hat hackers, jinn, a magic book, Arabic mythology, political chaos, and the difference between infatuation and love.

Alif is a young man, a “gray hat” hacker, selling his skills to provide cybersecurity to anyone who needs that protection from the government. He lives in an unnamed city-state in the Middle East, referred to throughout simply as the City. He’s non-ideological; he’ll sell his services to Islamists, communists, anyone.

Alif is not his real name, but it’s what he goes by, online, and among his friends. He hates his given name because it’s so common. He lives in a very modest neighborhood, in one half of a duplex, with his mother. In the other half is another family that has lived there as long as they have, and among the members of that family is Dina, a young woman his age, his friend, who has defied her family by going veiled. He’s in love, though, with Intisar, a young woman of much better family.

Everything seems to be going well, until Intisar tells him that her father has betrothed her to an important man in the City’s government. She doesn’t want to see or hear from him again. And everything starts to go wrong, in unexpected ways.

Alif, master hacker, decides to make sure she can never see or hear from him again, by designing a program that can identify her from any amount of online activity, and block her access to any information about him. The program becomes alarmingly capable; he’s not sure how he created something this flexible and seemingly independent. And while he’s using it, someone breaks into his system.

He cuts them off, but it’s very skilled hacker, and protecting his own system and the systems of his clients from discovery means shutting the whole thing down, including the software protecting his clients. This hacker must be the dread Hand of God, the City’s new and unidentified head of State Security.

And the world starts to go mad.

Alif did send Dina to bring Intisar the sheet they used the one time they had sex, unwashed, of course. She sent back by way of Dina a book. A very old book. The Thousand and One Days. And the man she’s now betrothed to wants the book, while Intisar wants Alif to find out more about the book. No explanation why, for either.

It’s the intersection of Alif’s new program, which he’s named TinSari, that launches Alif and Dina, and an American convert on a wild ride through high tech, Arabic mythology, jinn society, and political upheaval. Vikram the Vampire; a jinn woman called Sakina; a marid (a jinn, and (at least in this story) specifically the jinn from Aladdin); one of Alif’s online hacker friends, NewQuarter01, whose real-world identity comes as a shock to him; Azalel, Vikram’s sister; Sheikh Bilal, imam of the Al Basheera mosque; the dread “Hand of God” head of State Security, are all part of the adventure, as allies, enemies, or not clearly one or the other.

Oh, and The Thousand and One Days also plays an active role.

It’s a story of Alif exploring his programming abilities, encountering strangeness that might be quantum programming inspired by that old book, in which every word has seven thousand layers of meaning. He discovers levels of ruthlessness in real-world politics he never imagined while selling cybersecurity to anyone wanting to hide from their government.

There’s also a layer of romance here, too. And heroic sacrifice, cyberpunk, magical beings, and places that move when you’re not looking. It’s absorbing, exciting, terrifying, and has a satisfying ending.

Highly recommended.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) PROPSTORE’S ‘HALLOWEEN’ AUCTION IS COMING.

(12) NOT EXACTLY LUDDITES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Now, I have oft warned that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens…  Though the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, has noticed that it now seems to be war…

The war on artificial intelligence is no longer just online arguments and complaints about data centres. Something has shifted, and law enforcement has noticed. Where did this new anti-technology movement come from, who’s behind it, and where is it heading next? Let’s take a look.

You can see the video here  (7 minutes) or below

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “11 Soviet Sci-Fi Movies Most Westerners Have Never Seen” – as recommended by The Sci-Fi Graveyard

For decades, Hollywood defined what science fiction looked like. But while Kubrick, Lucas, and Scott were building the Western canon, Soviet filmmakers were making something just as ambitious and almost none of it crossed the Iron Curtain. I covered 11 Soviet sci-fi films most Westerners have never seen: a silent moon landing designed by the actual father of rocketry, a love story that beat The Shape of Water by 50 years, a film that may have literally killed the people who made it, and the cult comedy whose invented vocabulary entered the real Russian language. One of these films directly inspired George Lucas. He flew to Moscow to meet the director. Soviet officials had no idea who he was talking about.

Films covered in this video:

  • Cosmic Voyage (1936)
  • Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)
  • Through the Thorns to the Stars (1981)
  • City Zero (1988)
  • Amphibian Man (1962)
  • Inquest of Pilot Pirx (1979)
  • Dead Man’s Letters (1986)
  • Planet of Storms (1962)
  • Solaris (1972)
  • Stalker (1979)
  • Kin-dza-dza! (1986)

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

Pixel Scroll 8/16/26 When The Pixel-Scrolley’s Done, When The Hugo’s Lost And Won

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(1) L. W. CURREY BOOKSELLER ROBBED AGAIN. The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) reports genre specialty book dealer L. W. Currey has suffered another theft – the third, says Currey.

A theft has occurred on August 14, 2026 at the offices of Lloyd Currey of approximately 50 books, many unique and quite valuable. The New York State Police have been notified and are investigating. An initial report has been made but a case number is not yet available.

Currey says:

The third! Break-in was last night bypassing security… — total thefts over a quarter of a million. Most books are identifiable and some are unique.

Thief or thieves are knowledgeable and target specific authors and genres. This is under active investigation and lists have been sent to stolen book database. I would like to publicize this for warning others.

The list of stolen books can be downloaded here.

(2) ROBOTS I HAVE KNOWN. ScreenRant lists the “13 Best Robot Characters In TV History”.

Robots make some of the most iconic sci-fi movie characters of all time, from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s game-changing Terminator, to the more recent Roz in The Wild Robot. However, while the best sci-fi movie robots make an undeniable impact, TV shows often give viewers more of a chance to get to know these characters. Many sci-fi TV masterpieces use robots to question what it means to be human, which often reveals surprising answers.

Robot characters with human elements, like Cliff Steele in Doom Patrol, often have a head start and a ready-made plotline when their human and synthetic sides clash. However, the experiences of characters who are fully synthetic (with the occasional exception of lab-grown tissue) can turn a funny moment into a hilarious one, and a creepy show into a terrifying one.

Here’s the first on their list – one you might never have thought about.

The Mail Robot – The Americans

It is not unheard-of for spy dramas to contain advanced technology, from the James Bond franchise to Inspector Gadget. However, The Americans has a relatively serious tone that makes the arrival of the Mail Robot both surprising and hilarious. Aptly named, the device is intended for mail delivery, but it is an absolute nuisance to the staff at the FBI.

The bulky robot blocks pathways, malfunctions, and is a major security risk, with characters leaving classified documents on it. It is central to some major plotlines, with the episode “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” being one of the most nerve-wracking episodes in The Americans. The Mail Robot became an unlikely fan-favorite character, with its own X account which was active from 2015 to 2022 and mostly analyzed movie scenes from a robot’s perspective.

(3) 2ND PSIFA REUNION AND FIFTH SF FAN REUNION OF YEAR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It is always good to  have a few reunions each year. This long weekend was my fifth of sixth and four SF fan get-togethers of the year.

PSIFA logo

Myself, Anthony and Liz Heathcote and Chris Sellar, all first generation Hatfield PSIFAns, gathered in Sheffield along with two SF² Concatenation team – Simon and Elaine – in a mini-heatwave.  Four of us PSIFAns were involved in the early Shoestringcons, the first of which was held the same year as the Brighton Worldcon. (The first time we’d seen Chris in nearly [gasp] half a century!)

Much water has passed under the bridge since we were bright young things in our early 20s.  Hatfield PSIFA has also changed. Hatfield Polytechnic is now Hertfordshire University, and  PSIFA itself  is no longer a broad-church SF group (into books, films, genre-adjacent science, SF conventions etc) but is now devoted to table top gaming… C’est la vie as you Americans say…

Old Age PSIFANs — Liz, Jonathan Anthony and Chris

(4) RASMUSSEN Q&A. Shelf Awareness profiles a genre author in “Reading with… Seven Rasmussen”.

Seven Machina Rasmussen was created in a lab from the remnants of a crashed UFO in an audacious attempt to create the world’s gayest computer. Government officials claimed under duress that she is an astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. Rasmussen also writes science fiction under the pen name C.M. Fields, with recent works appearing in Clarkesworld, Diabolical Plots, and Neon Hemlock…. Her debut nonfiction is Cloudy with a Chance of Starships: How the Drake Equation Reveals the Odds of Life in the Cosmos (Princeton University Press, August 4, 2026).

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Chronicles of Narnia! I would read all seven books back-to-back over and over again. I still have the omnibus, which has a million water stains because I would read it in the bathtub. I was just so completely pulled into the storytelling. In my fiction, I’m always trying to re-create that complete absorption that captivated me as a child. And when I was very little, I loved Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so much that I had the entire book memorized. My mom would take me and my book to parties and amaze people with her toddler who could read.

Your top five authors:

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and short story collection, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month, I consider to be some of the best science fiction of the decade. Dan Simmons wrote my favorite sci-fi series, the Hyperion Cantos. That’s my gold standard of world-building. Jeff VanderMeer (the Southern Reach series) writes the weirdest, most brain-melting prose I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness) is the intellectual equivalent of staring at the sun (incomparably brilliant). Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series taught the power of committing to an absolutely insane premise so hard that it permanently alters the brain chemistry of gay people around the world.

Book you’ve faked reading:

This is really terrible of me, but I’ve never read Contact by Carl Sagan. I’ve never even seen the movie. I have read several books by Sagan, I’ve met Jill Tarter (on whom the book is based), and I like to think I’m in the top 100 people the government would abduct to Area 51 to attempt first contact, but I have not read Contact. This is my cross to bear.

(5) ‘MAUS’ CREATOR COMMENTS. “Art Spiegelman: ‘The US needs a counter-revolution’” – so he tells the Guardian.

…Spiegelman, who in 1992 became the first cartoonist to win a Pulitzer prize for Maus, a graphic novel about his father’s memories of the Holocaust, has done more than anyone to establish comics as a serious art form, capable of tackling difficult political and personal subjects….

…He is 78 years old, slight and scruffy-looking, with a grizzled goatee and wispy grey hair, and he can still talk faster than most people can think. …

…Spiegelman muses that the US’s volatile politics might reflect humankind’s natural tendency to self-destruction. “I guess, after a while, you get restless, so if you get too comfortable you create problems for yourself, even in more mundane, small-time life, never mind as a nation. At this point, we just had the bad luck of having a megalomaniac walking onto the scene,” he says, of the Trump presidency. American politics is, after all, “entertaining if you don’t give a shit, if you’re nihilistic”.

Spiegelman’s mood is sombre as he discusses how Trump has “very effectively dismantled” the country’s democratic ideals: “Whatever the ideals were, we never lived up to them, but at least we had them. Now it’s all so cynical and sordid and stupid.” The president “is cutting off civil liberties and using his powers to squelch dissent and enrich himself in such thoroughly illegal ways, it’s kind of mindblowing”, Spiegelman says, and he finds himself watching in alarm as the “plutocrat in chief” and his “few dozen toadies” get ever richer while ordinary Americans struggle and suffer a “new indignity every day”. He has no hesitation in describing the Trump administration as fascist. “It’s fascism,” he says. “It’s not nazism, per se, but it has a template that it’s following. And it does have to do with othering, which is the basis of what Maus is about, it’s: ‘OK, you guys are mice, we’re cats.’” Maus is among the many books to be banned by various Republican school boards in recent years, but Spiegelman says he has a “predilection” for producing the kind of art people will seek to ban. Sales of Maus spiked in response to the bans.

“I tend to be pessimistic, but this is worse than most things I know,” he says of American politics. “I just don’t see how we get out of this.” The media are struggling with how to convey the stakes in this post-truth era, he explains, the courts are packed with Trump appointees, democratic norms have been destroyed, and there is no effective opposition. The Republicans are “at this point the equivalent of made men in the mafia,” Spiegelman says, “they’ve committed a murder, they’re complicit in something and they have to keep moving as a complicit unit, so it’s very hard to get someone to blow the whistle and say ‘This is crazy.’” The US needs a “counter-revolution”, Spiegelman says. “But I don’t know where to look for it because the Democrats are so timid.”…

(6) BIG B.O. “’Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Joins $2 Billion Box Office Club”. Yahoo! has the tally.

After three weekends in theaters, Sony/Marvel Studios’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has made history as the eighth film to gross $2 billion at the global box office.

The milestone was assured after its $360 million domestic/$927 million global launch at the end of July, as the film enjoyed excellent reception from critics and audiences alike. With a $70 million domestic third weekend, the movie is well on course to keep on rolling past post-COVID shutdown megahits like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Ne Zha 2” to become the third film to reach $2.5 billion before inflation adjustment, joining “Avatar” and “Avengers: Endgame” in that elite club.

Domestically, the film is also pushing to become the highest grossing release of all time by passing the $936 million record set in 2016 by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Currently, “Brand New Day” is on pace to reach that mark with $785 million after three weekends, 5.6% ahead of the pace set by “Force Awakens,” though its mid-week grosses have been lower compared to that film’s holiday

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 16, 1934 — Diana Wynne Jones. (Died 2011.)

Tonight we’re at the fiction of Diana Wynne Jones. I’m picking just my favorites here.

Diana Wynne Jones

So what do I pick off the shelf first for reading by her? That’s Deep Secret, where the protagonist is Rupert Venables, overseer of the Multiverse, and who’s going to PhantasmaCon. Absolutely fun it is. And the sequel, The Merlin Conspiracy, is just as pleasing.

If there’s essential reading for her by me in terms of just plain being intrigued by the idea underlying the book, it’d be The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which is a playful look at the genre. A really playful look. 

Fire and Hemlock for her artful merging of the Scottish ballads Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer is amazing. Then there’s the setting here, a small private college. We’ve such a college not far away up the coast and her depiction feels spot on.

What’s not to like about Howl’s Moving Castle with its moving, magical castle inhabited by the wizard Howl and his fire demon, Calcifer, alongside his apprentice, Michael? Simply an extraordinary reading experience. The film is good, but the novel much better. 

Let’s not overlook the exemplary short story collection she did of Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories with the great cover by Dan Craig. Yes, I bought it without opening the book solely because of it. Well and that it was by her.

My final pick, and yes, I’m fully aware how much I’m overlooking in just giving my personal choices, is Archer’s Goon, a boy who finds out something about himself quite unexpected. A family with secrets. A creature who won’t leave their house. What’s not to be intrigued by? I’m sure one of you will talk about, won’t you? 

I’m very much looking forward to hearing your choices now.

A postscript. I would be very remiss not to mention Farah Mendlesohn’s Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature which I’ve not read but was reviewed on Green Man by Kestrell Rath.

She leads off her review this way, “Diana Wynne Jones (DWJ to her fans) is one of those writers who, despite the fact that she is frequently referred to as a ‘children’s author,’ has a significant following of adult readers. Although there are an increasing number of literary critics addressing the subject of children’s and young adult fantasy, there is still a lack of literary criticism addressing why those books often shelved in the children’s sections of bookstores and libraries hold such a strong appeal for so many adult readers. Despite the title of this book (a title chosen by the publisher, not the author), its subject is a sophisticated exploration of Diana Wynne Jones’s complex approach to writing and storytelling.”

(8) COMICS SECTION.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2026-08-11T11:21:11.670Z

(9) KAIJU KITTY. “McDonald’s to unleash Hello Kitty x Godzilla Happy Meal next week” reports Yahoo!

McDonald’s is rolling out a new Happy Meal next week in an unexpected crossover between Japanese pop culture icons. 

The KittyZilla Happy Meal brings together Sanrio’s beloved Hello Kitty and Friends characters and some of the most iconic monsters from the Godzilla universe. It will be available at participating McDonald’s locations in the United States for a limited time starting Tuesday, Aug. 18….

…Here’s the full toy lineup:

  • Hello Kitty x Godzilla
  • Kuromi x Mechagodzilla
  • My Melody x Mothra
  • Keroppi x King Ghidorah
  • Pompompurin x Gigan
  • Badtz-Maru x Rodan
  • Chococat x SpaceGodzilla
  • Cinnamoroll x Destoroyah

(10) SELF-PROPELLED BIRRIA. “Two Billy Goats Boarded a Bus in Portland. They Did Not Have Passes.” The New York Times tells what happened next. (Behind a paywall.)

There was not a moment to spare.

The doors to the TriMet bus, which was heading west on Tuesday morning toward downtown Portland, Ore., had started to close when they opened for two stragglers.

Neither paid the fare.

Kids ride free, or so they thought.

Not in the case of these two juvenile goats, which transit officials and the police said had escaped from their enclosure and ventured onto a lime green FX2-Division bus.

Security camera footage chronicled their strange escapade, showing some other passengers doing a double take before shooing the goats off the bus after the driver reopened the doors.

Their jaunt prompted 911 calls and drew comparisons in Portland to the famous 2002 foray of a coyote that wandered onto a light rail MAX train, which was not in service at the time, and inspired a music video and another song.

“They don’t have a valid pass,” the driver playfully told the other passengers as the goats exited the bus.

The goats belong to a family that lives less than two blocks from the bus stop and are named Billy the Kid and Billy the Goat, Lrae Anderson, who identified himself as the owner, said in an interview on Friday.

“I couldn’t believe that they actually went across the busy street and tried to get on the bus and all that,” Mr. Anderson said.

He added, “They got on like they’ve done it before.”

(11) SPACE OPERA NOVELS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Sci-Fi Scavenger has just posted a look at his favourite space opera books.

In this video I’m counting down **my 20 favourite space opera novels of all time**. These are the books that, for me, best capture the sense of wonder that only space opera can deliver. Some are undisputed classics, while others deserve a much bigger audience.

The list includes legendary authors like *Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, Frank Herbert, Adrian Tchaikovsky, C.J. Cherryh, Larry Niven, Peter F. Hamilton* and many more.

From *Dune* and *The Expanse* to *The Algebraist**, **House of Suns**, **Children of Time**, **A Fire Upon the Deep* and plenty of hidden gems, these are the novels I’d recommend to anyone wanting to explore the very best that space opera has to offer.

You can see the 24 minute video here or below…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/15/26 This Is The Emergency Scroll System. Look At Your Left, Look To Your Right. See There’s A Scroll To Read

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(1) IT’S ALL GREEK TO YOU. [Item by Steven French.] Despite being constructed for very different purposes, ‘artificial’ languages such as Elvish, Esperanto and Klingon activate the same brain areas as natural languages, unlike programming languages: “Elvish, Klingon and Pig Latin: What can invented languages teach us about the human brain?” asks Phys.org.

For many years, it was not clear how the brain responds to invented languages. To address this, a 2025 study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took functional magnetic resonance images of brain activity in people who spoke them.

The results were clear. When fluent speakers used invented languages (such as Esperanto, Klingon, the Na’vi language from Avatar, and High Valyrian or Dothraki from Game of Thrones), the brain activated the same neural networks as for a natural language. In other words, there was no difference in how the brain processed natural and invented languages.

But for the brain to perceive these languages as a real language, they have to express meaning about the world, other people and our own mental states. For this reason, programming languages do not—despite their clear rules and structure—activate the same brain areas.’…

(2) FAIR SURPRISES. Robert Gold tells about “Planting the Seed: How Agatha Christie’s Techniques Shaped the Modern Thriller” at CrimeReads.

In Sleeping Murder, Miss Marple visits the fictional British seaside town of Dillmouth. She warns the novels young protagonists, Gwenda and Giles, not to investigate past events at their new home, telling them to let well alone. Miss Marple then proceeds to uncover and solve a decades old murder, where only the killer knew a murder had taken place.

Sleeping Murder is one of my favorite Christie novels for the way she seeds the constantly unfurling plot, leaving clues for the reader at each stage of the story. By the end of the book, Miss Marple has uncovered the victim, where and how she was killed, where she is buried and, of course, who the killer is. Throughout Sleeping Murder, Christie takes us on a brilliant journey of discovery where one revelation leads to another, before the killer is finally exposed.

In reading the novel, a casual reader can enjoy the story for what it is: an adventure in a seaside town with classic characters and a great twist at the end. However, Christie knew other readers liked to read in forensic detail. Searching for clues, acting as detective, they follow the seeds she carefully plants along the way.

Reading a Christie thriller for a second time gives you a true appreciation of her genius. All thriller writers wanting to learn from her skill should take the time to revisit her classics. A second reading, when you have full knowledge of the final denouement, lets you share in all of the authors brilliantly seeded delicious twists and turns.

In every one of her novels, she seeds the truth, but very often secrets are planted so deep they are impossible to appreciate upon first reading. Early in Sleeping Murder, the author gives us such a definitive steer on the location of the body, long before the confirmation of an actual murder, reading the book again you wonder how you missed it….

(3) USED DATA BUYERS. “Secondhand booksellers in UK and Ireland suspect AI firms behind ‘strange’ bulk orders” reports the Guardian.

Secondhand booksellers in the UK and Ireland are reporting a flurry of bulk orders from mystery buyers, amid speculation AI companies are acquiring the tomes for their data.

Bookshops contacted by the Guardian say they have been receiving orders from buyers in the US, Canada, continental Europe and the UK. The increase has been replicated around the world, with booksellers in the US, Australia and Europe also reporting unusual orders.

Stuart Manley, the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said the orders, which began arriving three months ago, were unusual because they did not follow the typical pattern of being grouped into themes such as sport or motoring.

“It’s definitely a strange combination of books,” said Manley. “Normally a book order is on a theme but this is all over the place.”

(4) COMPLAINTS ABOUT ANOTHER SCRAPER. “Twitch faces backlash over Amazon using content to train AI” – BBC has details. (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

Twitch has been criticised by users after it emerged the popular streaming platform allowed their content to be used to train Amazon’s AI models.

Amazon owns Twitch and a setting allowing the US tech giant to take data generated by creators and audiences to train AI is turned on by default.

Users can opt out of that, Twitch said on Wednesday, but the announcement sparked a backlash with some users questioning why it was allowed in the first place.

Twitch’s chief product officer Mike Minton, said it was “respecting” users by letting them opt out but on why data was collected by default, he admitted: “If it’s opt-in, nobody would opt-in. That’s the honest answer.”

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 15, 1933 – Bĵo Trimble, 93.

Bĵo was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, in 1933, discovered sf fandom in 1952. She was serving in the US Navy, at the Great Lakes Naval Station, and saw an announcement in Astounding Science Fiction about the science fiction convention that weekend in Chicago—the 10th Worldcon, the one we now call Chicon II, though at the time it had no official name. The largest Worldcon ever at the time, with 870 members, it was a great place for a smart and friendly young woman to meet people and make connections in fandom. Her new acquaintances included Robert Bloch, Willy Ley, August Derleth, and Harlan Ellison.

Bĵo Trimble attends the 2024 Peabody Awards at Beverly Wilshire on June 9. Photo by Jon Kopaloff.

When it was discovered that she was an artist and cartoonist, she was recruited to provide illustrations for fanzines, sealing her fate. She claims to have met her husband, John Griffin Trimble, under Forrest J Ackerman’s piano, during a particularly crowded party. He was serving in the US Air Force, and they traded Stupid Officer Stories.

But as we all know, this was mere prelude. Bĵo was active in LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fiction Society), and organized a fashion show for Solacon (the 16th Worldcon). In 1960, she started Project Art Show, which brought the first modern, organized art show at a science fiction convention to Pittcon, the 1960 Worldcon. Bĵo continued the project, bringing art shows to Worldcons and other conventions. By 1969, Project Art Show had become The International Science-Fantasy Art Exhibition” (ISFAE), and was judging and awarding prizes, as well as organizing the art shows.

But in 1968, Bĵo started turning her attention to a new fannish interest–Star Trek. Bĵo and John Trimble were active in the letter-writing campaign credited with getting the show a third season, after it was initially canceled after its second season. They also helped convince NASA to name the first of the Space Shuttles Enterprise, although that was a test vehicle never intended for space flight.

Bĵo was a major contributor to the Star Trek Concordance, containing cross-referenced details on every character, setting, event and device in every episode of the original Star Trek, and, in later editions of the book, its animated incarnation, and the Star Trek films. Originally self-published, it got a mass market publication by Ballantine Books in 1976, and an updated edition by Citadel Press in 1995. On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek, her memoir of her experiences in Star Trek fandom, was published in 1982.

Bĵo was a Guest of Honor at Dragon Con, which was also the 6th North American Science Fiction Convention, in 1995. Bĵo and John Trimble were Fan Guests of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th Worldcon. Bĵo, or Bĵo and John, were also honored at many Star Trek and other science fiction conventions.

In addition, Bĵo and John Trimble were Baron and Baroness of the Society for Creative Anachronism’s Barony of the Angels, from September 2008 to January 2012. That’s at least fandom adjacent, right?

 Sadly, John left us in April 2024, but Bĵo is still with us. Her contributions to fandom will remain.

Luise Petti and Bĵo at Disneyland in 1966. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

(7) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 166 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Writings of Greeks and Romans”, is introduced by John Coxon who says, “It’s a day late, and John’s going to bed now. Goodnight everyone. Zzzzzzzzzzz.”

There’s an uncorrected transcript here.

A photograph of a total solar eclipse above a beach in Northern Spain. Text reads “Octothorpe 166” in purple at the top and “SUMMER of SUN” in white at the bottom.

(8) LUCKY RABBIT GETS TV SERIES. “’Oswald’ Gets Live-Action Animated Series on Disney+” reports Variety.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, one of Disney’s earliest characters who predated Mickey Mouse, is back for the 21st century.

At the D23 fan event in Anaheim on Friday, Disney revealed the first look at its live action combined with hand-drawn 2D animation series “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” that’s being written, directed and executive produced by Jon Favreau. The series is coming to Disney+ as a three-part miniseries in February 2027….

… Oswald was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1927 for Universal Pictures. The character proved to be a major milestone for Disney, as he and Iwerks created Mickey Mouse after Universal took control of Oswald in 1928. The Walt Disney Company reacquired the rights to the character in 2006, though it entered the public domain in 2023….

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

Pixel Scroll 8/14/26 When The Scroll Comes A Filing, The Pixel Turn It Back, First From The Circle, Fifth From The Track

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(1) THE VOTES FOR COUNT BINFACE HAVE BEEN COUNTED. “Count Binface gets almost 10,000 votes in Clacton by-election” – BBC says he came in second. 

Count Binface has enjoyed his best-ever election performance after receiving almost 10,000 votes and finishing second to Nigel Farage at the Clacton by-election.

The self-styled intergalactic space warrior said he was “more popular” when standing against Farage compared to Andy Burnham, after he picked up 95 votes when challenging the now-prime minister in Makerfield in June.

Count Binface received 9,455 votes compared to Farage’s 22,239. His 26.9% share of the vote is thought to be the highest ever for a novelty candidate.

He became the leading rival to Farage after the main UK parties boycotted the by-election triggered by the Reform UK leader, amid questions over his finances.

Farage had branded Count Binface the “candidate of the establishment” after claiming supporters of other parties had canvassed for him.

The contest in the Essex constituency saw a record 34 candidates for a Westminster Parliament election, although Farage did not attend the announcement of the result in person, denying Count Binface and others a chance to line-up alongside him in the Clacton Leisure Centre.

This led Count Binface to declare he was “the winning candidate in the room”.

Reform UK said Essex Police had advised Farage not to attend the count “due to a credible threat against him”.

The BBC has been told the force did not advise any candidate that they should not attend the count.

Count Binface is the satirical alter ego of comedian Jon Harvey, who has specialised in satire and been involved with BBC comedy shows, including The Thick of It and Have I Got News For You….

…The Clacton result was the first time that Count Binface has retained the £500 deposit candidates are required to make to validate their nomination. It is repaid if a candidate polls more than 5% of the total number of valid votes cast in the constituency….

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to break away from StokerCon for BBQ with Jamal Hodge on Episode 289 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Jamal Hodge

My third Eating the Fantastic conversation during the 2026 StokerCon was with the award-winning writer of horror poetry and prose Jamal Hodge mere hours after his Bram Stoker Award win of the previous night.

That isn’t the only award recognition Hodge has received along his writing journey, for he’s also an Elgin Award winner, a Dwarf Stars Award winner and a Rhysling Award finalist. His collections include The Dark Between the Twilight, which earned him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination, as well as Everything Endless, written with previous guest of this podcast Linda Addison, which is what resulted in this year’s win.

His creative life isn’t limited to the page, for he’s also a multi-award-winning filmmaker who’s a sitting Board Member of Harlem Film House and Axs Lab. His films have been an official selection in over 100 Film Festivals, and have won more than 50 awards including The Vanguard Award (Best of The Fest) at the Hip Hop Film Festival (2020), Best Director at The Chelsea Film Festival (2020) and Best Director at GenreBlast (2020). He co‑produced the Academy Award‑nominated documentary Armed Only With a Camera: The Life & Death of Brent Renaud, and is producing the upcoming animated feature Pierre the Pigeon Hawk. He also directed the first season of the Discovery ID series Primal Instinct.

His upcoming books include I’m Not a Good Person, I’m a New Yorker from Crystal Lake Publishing in Sept 2026, plus Shards of Gotham: New York City Through the Looking Glass from Ruadán Books in June 2027.

We discussed how winning a Stoker Award the previous night altered his ambitions, why Linda Addison is his favorite collaborator, how most things we think of as choices aren’t, why he prefers Batman to Spider-Man, the reason the environment in his stories is not your friend, the way the living are controlled by the dead, how he always starts a project thinking it’s one thing only to discover it’s something else, what Mega Man has to do with him becoming a better writer, his favorite short story of all time, how 1984 made him realize what writing could do, the way poetry healed him, plus much more.

(3) XPRIZE FILM COMPETITION. “Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson, Mira Lane, Rod Roddenberry to Judge XPRIZE Sci-Fi Film Competition” reports Variety.

XPRIZE announced the judges for its sci-fi film competition, which aims to inspire optimistic adaptations of a technology-enabled future.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neal Stephenson, Mira Lane and Rod Roddenberry will preside over the competition. The panel will help select the grand prize winner, who will be named at Moonshots Live on Sept. 25 in Los Angeles.

The Future Vision XPRIZE competition invites global filmmakers and creators to submit three-minute trailers or short films that depict hopeful future visions. Submissions close Aug. 15.

The grand prize is $2.5 million in production funding to develop the concept, as well as $100K cash. Four runner-ups will receive $100K each, and 10 finalists will receive $10K….

(4) CZECH IT OUT. A Deep Look by Dave Hook delves into “’FROM THE LAND OF ROBOTS AND GOLEMS: Chronicles of Czech Science Fiction, vol. 5, 21st century Czech speculative fiction’, Julie Nováková editor, 2025 Nová vlna”. Here’s his short take. The long analysis is at the link.

The Short: I attended at least one gathering and several panels relating to science fiction in the Czech Republic at the 2025 Seattle Worldcon. I obtained and read FROM THE LAND OF ROBOTS AND GOLEMS: Chronicle of Czech Science Fiction, vol. 5, 21st century Czech speculative fiction, Julie Nováková editor, 2025 Nová vlna. It includes an Introduction by Julie Nováková, ten works of short fiction (including three published in English for the first time here), two novel excerpts (translated for the first time here), an Authors and Translators essay which is quite helpful, and brief author/story note paragraphs for each story. It’s 278 pages and available in trade paperback from the publisher. My favorites were the great “The Thanatos Mode”, a short story by Tom Hadrava, and “A Flaw In The Works”, a novelette by Julie Nováková. My overall, average rating is 3.63/5, or “Very good”. Recommended.

(5) NEW YORK CITY EXHIBIT. EV Grieve advises, “You have 2 days to see Jon Langford’s ‘Insignificance’”.  Photos at the link. Jon is the brother of David Langford.

A three-day exhibition featuring the work of artist and musician Jon Langford is up through tomorrow at 14BC Gallery, 626 E. 14th St. between Avenue B and Avenue C.

Titled “Insignificance,” the show is on view today from 3-7 p.m. and tomorrow from 1-7 p.m….

(6) MURAKAMI MEETS TERPSICHORE. [Item by Steven French.] Bringing Murakami alive through the medium of dance: “’Murakami saw his book come alive!’: the Japanese company bringing the author’s science fiction masterpiece to the stage” reports the Guardian.

Tatsuya Fujiwara is no stranger to London’s Barbican theatre. It was here nearly 30 years ago that one of Japan’s biggest film stars, now 44, made his stage debut. He was just 15, plucked out of an audition of more than 5,000 hopeful youngsters by the revered theatre director Yukio Ninagawa for his play Shintoku-Maru. It kickstarted Fujiwara’s career, and three years later he landed a role in the cult dystopian film Battle Royale, going on to star in hit TV dramas and blockbuster films, all the while continuing to perform in Ninagawa’s acclaimed productions.

Now, Fujiwara returns to where it all began, to perform in a stage adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s science fiction novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The story alternates between two seemingly unrelated narratives: a cyberpunk thriller set in Tokyo, and a surreal fantasy that unfolds within a mysterious walled town. Directed by the French choreographer Philippe Decouflé, the play premiered in Tokyo in January, toured Japan until March, then Singapore in April. After the Barbican run this autumn, the tour will wrap up in Paris.

“When performing in Japan, you become accustomed to your own audience,” says Fujiwara. “You develop a feel for what reaches them and how they receive you. The moment you cross a border, that certainty disappears.”…

(7) SINCE WHEN IS 800 BOOKS A LOT? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Woman Divides Internet with Creative Storage Solution After Amassing Collection of More Than 800 Books” reports People.

…Her unconventional storage system began in 2024, when she moved back home during a gap year after graduating from college. By then, her books had outgrown her shelves, and selling or donating some titles wasn’t enough to solve the problem.

“That’s when I realized I had all this unused space beneath my bed and thought, why not turn it into book storage?” Monroy says.

The bed itself was never intended to house hundreds of books. Monroy says she bought the full-size platform bed from Wayfair years earlier and never modified it; it simply happened to have enough space underneath to accommodate her collection.

Getting hundreds of books into the space took a few hours. To keep the setup from becoming an impossible-to-navigate maze, Monroy also created a spreadsheet.

“The organization makes it surprisingly easy to find a specific book,” she explains. “The books are grouped by series, genre, and author, and I also keep a spreadsheet that tracks which pile each book is in, so I know exactly where to look when I want a particular title.”…

Harlan Ellison used to store his comics collection under his bed – except he had someone build a multi-level platform that looked like a red-painted ziggarut and was about halfway to the ceiling.

(8) ANIMATION EMMYS. “’Primal,’ ‘Eyes of Wakanda,’ ‘The Mighty Nein’ and ‘Star Wars: Visions’ Win Juried Animation Emmy Awards” – Animation Magazine has the story.

The TV Academy has revealed the juried award winners in animation for the upcoming 78th Emmy Awards. The awards, which are screened by a panel of professionals in the appropriate peer groups (animation, costume design, emerging media, and motion and title design) will be presented on Saturday, Sept. 5, and Sunday, Sept. 6 at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live. An edited version of these first two nights will air on Saturday, Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. on FXX.

The 2026 Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Emmys winners are:

  • Eyes of Wakanda • Into the Lion’s Den [Disney+, Marvel Animation]
    Uzoma Dunkwu, Character Design
  • Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal • Kingdom of Sorrow [Adult Swim, Cartoon Network Studios
    David Krantz, Storyboards
  • Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal • Vengeance of Death [Adult Swim, Cartoon Network Studios]
    Scott Wills, Art Direction
  • The Mighty Nein • Mote of Possibility [Prime Video, Amazon MGM Studios, Titmouse Studios, Critical Role Productions]
    Howard Chen, Background Design
  • Star Wars: Visions • The Duel: Payback [Disney+, Kamikaze Douga, ANIMA, Lucasfilm Ltd.]
    Takashi Okazaki, Character Designer

No juried Emmy will be awarded in the Outstanding Motion Design category this year.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

August 14, 1965 — Brannon Braga, 61.

Brannon Braga was, not at the same time or always, the writer, producer and creator of the Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise, The Orville, as well as writer of First Contact, Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis films.

Brannon Braga

Those four films he’s written. Is that more than anyone else? I could look it up, but I figure I’d ask the great pool of Trek fans here instead. 

Confession time — I’ve still not watched The Orville. Now that it’s been canceled, shall I go ahead and watch all of it? Opinions please. 

He has written more episodes of the many Trek series than anyone, many of course co- written. I really don’t think he’ll be writing any more as his last scripts were for Enterprise.

He was responsible for the Next Generation series finale “All Good Things…” which won him a Hugo Award at Intersection for excellence in SF writing, along with Ronald D. Moore. 

He was nominated at LoneStarCon2 for Star Trek: First Contact for the screenplay along with Ronald D. Moore, and the story by Rick Berman and Ronald D. Moore; Torcon 3 saw him pick up two nominations for Enterprise stories — first for the “Carbon Creek” story along with Rick Berman and Dan O’Shannon, and the wonderful “A Night in The Sick Bay” with Rick Berman.

(Digression. Ok, I like Enterprise a lot. For me, everything there worked. And the Mirror Universe finale worked for me though it got a lot of criticism.) 

Aussiecon 4 saw him pick up only his non-Trek related Hugo nomination or Award. It was for writing FlashForward’s “No More Good Days” with David S. Goyer. 

There’s a great quote by him after he stopped being Roddenberry’s replacement as head of the Trek franchise: “It’s not an easy task. On the other hand, I have nothing to be ashamed about. We created 624 hours of television and four feature films, and I think we did a hell of a job. I’m amazed that we managed to get 18 years of the kind of work that everyone involved managed to contribute to, and it’s certainly more than anyone could have asked for.” — Star Trek Magazine

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) THE DEMOLISHED ROBOT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “How a Smart Recycling Robot Dismantles Old Devices” at IEEE Spectrum.

…There are over 4 million industrial robots in use worldwide, according to the International Federation of Robotics. And researchers predict that number will grow to over 16 million by 2030, as manufacturing rapidly increases. But what’s going to happen when they start breaking down? A new system designed by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in Karlsruhe, Germany, can predict the defect in a broken product and disassemble it while protecting valuable parts from damage. To continue robotic development sustainably, the industry should prepare for the dismantling, recycling, and rebuilding of our robotic systems.

The system consists of a predictive algorithm that guesses how a product is broken, along with robotic manipulators that actually take the broken product apart. At every stage of the process, the system checks to see if the results align with its predictions, and updates its methods if necessary….

Not quite a Clifford Simak-level ‘bot, but still interesting.

(But)(asks Dern): What if two of these robots try disassembling each other?

What if they escape, and start disassembling things at random?

What if they start trying to disassemble people?

What if they keep parts and build more robots for their own use, community, army, etc.?

What could possibly go wrong?

(12) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readings of August 12, 2026 at Flickr.

(13) TWIST AND SHOUT. “Oreo unveils 3 new limited flavors, invites fans to vote on favorite” – USA Today tells what to expect.

The cookie brand revealed exclusively to USA TODAY on Thursday, Aug. 13, that it is launching three new limited-edition cookie flavors at once and letting fans vote for their favorite one. The winning flavor will be brought back in 2027, the company said in a news release.

The three new flavors include:

  • Oreo Banana Pudding Cookies: Feature layers of sweet banana and vanilla pudding in a deliciously delectable dual-layered creme, sandwiched between vanilla wafer cookies.
  • Oreo Deep Fried Cookies: Feature iconic golden-fried, doughy flavor baked into the cookie itself with fried dough-flavored cookies wrapping layers of dark chocolate and fried dough-flavored creme.
  • Oreo Chicken & Waffles Cookies: Feature a signature waffle texture and embossment and dual-layered creme, both infused with sweet and savory flavor notes for a fried chicken and maple syrup flavor in every bite.

(14) OPENS TODAY. “The End of Oak Street | Official Trailer”.

After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their very survival depends on them sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings. Starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, THE END OF OAK STREET also stars Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. The film is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell and produced by J.J. Abrams, Hannah Minghella, Jon Cohen, David Robert Mitchell, Matt Jackson and Tommy Harper. The executive producers are Chris Bender, Jake Weiner, Joanne Lee and Leeann Stonebreaker. Mitchell’s team behind the camera includes director of photography Michael Gioulakis, production designer Maya Shimoguchi, editor John Axelrad, composer Michael Giacchino and costume designer Erin Benach. Warner Bros. Pictures Presents A Bad Robot Production, A Jackson Pictures Production, A David Robert Mitchell Film: THE END OF OAK STREET. The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, only in theaters and IMAXÒ in North America on August 14, 2026, and internationally beginning 12 August 2026.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/13/26 I Like Pixels — Snakes, You Have To Feed

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(1) HARTWELL’S BOOKS NOW INVENTORY. The Sun Community News celebrates: a “New bookstore opens in Westport” (New York).

Dragon Press

Dragon Press — a two-in-one business that serves as both a bookstore and a family art and design studio — officially reopened on July 22.

Located on Champlain Avenue, the shop features a variety of science fiction, fantasy, and horror hardcover first editions from the vast collection of the late David G. Hartwell.

A native of Salem, Mass., Hartwell was an American critic, publisher, and editor of thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels, best known for his work with Tor Books and Timescape Books at Simon & Schuster.

“He edited literally thousands of books, primarily science fiction, fantasy, and horror by prominent authors like George R.R, Martin, Gene Wolfe, Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and more,” said his widow, Kathryn Cramer, who runs the shop today. “He really had a very broad impact over a long period of time.”

Unfortunately, an accidental fall led to his passing at the age of 74 in 2016. Eventually, Cramer, as Literary Executor, took over sales of his books, over 20,000 of them, that Hartwell started collecting from the age of 12.

“He was an early collector. He already had a notable collection when he was in college and then continued collecting afterward up until his passing,” said Cramer about the man who received a BA in 1963 from Williams College, an MA in 1965 from Colgate University, and a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature from Columbia University in 1973. “It’s a very impressive collection.”

And while Henry Wessels of James Cummins Bookseller, a well-known antiquarian book dealer in New York City, is handling his more high-end books, Cramer is selling the rest of his used-book collection in the shop and a future online bookstore.

Walking in today, around 3,500 of his books are lined along the walls. His neckties, which he was notorious for wearing, hang from the ceiling, along with other book covers, convention paper ephemera, and more….

(2) LIVE, LOVE, AND PROSPER. [Item by N.] A flag for anyone in the Illinois area: there’s a large estate sale in Downer’s Grove (started today, continuing into Friday and Saturday). Among the items being sold is a large collection of vintage Star Trek memorabilia, which includes vintage Kirk/Spock slash fanfiction, some of which may or may not have been previously lost. 

(3) THREE FORMER ‘DOCTORS’ WILL GUEST ON MYSTERY SERIES. “’Only Murders In The Building’ Adds Peter Capaldi To Season 6 Cast” reports Deadline.

It’s only murders in the building and mostly actors who have played Doctor Who‘s title character in the upcoming sixth season of Hulu‘s murder mystery comedy.

Peter Capaldi, who portrayed the Twelfth Doctor, has been cast as a recurring guest star in the London-set installment of Only Murders In the Building. He joins fellow Season 6 recurring cast additions Jodie Whittaker, who was Capaldi’s successor and the first woman to portray the iconic Time Lord, and the actor most closely associated with the role, David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor and the Fourteenth Doctor. Additionally, part of OMITB‘s upcoming season is Jim Broadbent, who played an alternate version of the Eleventh Doctor in the 1999 Comic Relief special Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death.

The previously announced S6 recurring guest stars also include Nicola Coughlan, Richard Ayoade, Adrian Lukis, Kathryn Hunter, Jennifer Saunders, Sean Teale, Simone Ashley, Amar Chadha-Patel, Rhea Norwood, Matthew Beard, Sharon Horgan, Martin Freeman, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Jamie Demetriou, Anjana Vasan, Jane Horrocks, Derek Jacobi and Lesley Nicol.

Production on the new season continues in the U.K.. This marks the first time the comedy mystery series has ventured outside of the U.S., as the crime-solving trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) leaves New York City to investigate London’s newest mystery.

(4) BRITISH LIBRARY PROGRAMMING. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Cheery news from the British Library. “American Writers’ Week”. Program is both in-person and online. Ticket information at the link.

Join us for the British Library’s American Writers’ Week (28 September – 2 November), presented in association with Festival America, Vincennes, France. 

Participating writers include Alison Bechdel, Armistead Maupin, Daniel Kraus, Jeanine Cummins, Joyce Carol Oates, Katie Kitamura, Rabih Alameddine and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Including “American Writers’ Week: Daniel Kraus”.

A rare chance to hear from one of the most adventurous writers of our time, recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Angel Down. This astonishing cinematic horror novel about survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict, set amongst the grit and mud of the trenches in WW1, was described by The Pulitzer committee as ‘a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism, and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence’.

Daniel Kraus is also the multi award winning author of Whalefall, now a major film starring starring Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue; co-author of The Shape of Water and Trollhunters alongside Guillermo del Toro and co-writer of The Living Dead and Pay the Piper with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero.

In conversation with serial horror anthologist Johnny Mains.

(5) M. JOHN HARRISON’S INFLUENCES. BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books features “M. John Harrison” on August 16.

The writer M. John Harrison speaks to Take Four Books about his latest novel, The End of Everything, and, together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its connections to three other works. The End of Everything follows the characters of Phillip Tennent and his elderly aunt Marnie. A crisis has happened. The exact nature of which remains obscure, but government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures and Europe has been mislaid. Is this the end?

For his three influences M. John Harrison chose: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham which was published in 1961 and released as a film two years later; Drought by J. G. Ballard from 1965; and a short story called The Same Dog by Robert Aickman from 1974.

(6) MAGIC: THE GATHERING PROFILED. The August 12 Marketplace Morning Report features “Putting the magic in Magic: The Gathering”.

Today, we hear what it takes to bring the fantastical world of Magic: The Gathering to life.

And there’s a segment on “How designers for Magic: The Gathering started out”.

Meet the professionals behind Magic: The Gathering’s fantastical worlds.

Trading card games — like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon — surged during the pandemic, as more people searched for comfort and nostalgia. But unlike some other COVID-era trends, their popularity has stuck around.

Take Magic: The Gathering, for example. Hasbro said that the game’s revenue jumped 32% in the second quarter, to a record $545 million.

This week on “What’s That Like” we’re meeting some of the workers who bring the Magic ecosystem to life.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 13, 1899 — Alfred Hitchcock. (Died 1980.)

By Paul Weimer: Alfred Hitchcock came to my attention in drips and drabs at first, hearing his name, hearing about him, and hearing about his work. But until I was an adult, I had not actually seen a single complete version of any of his movies. I finally decided to watch Psycho, and see what the fuss was all about. Although it is somewhat atypical of his works, I indeed was blown away by the cinematography, the writing, the narrative and the tight revelations. I saw his economy of motion and action, the precision of his movies. 

Alfred Hitchcock

I was hooked and started renting all the Hitchcock I could get. Rear Window, long before I got into photography, fascinated me. (Also, Grace Kelly to be honest). Vertigo seems the least “fun” of his movies, but the most technically and narratively precise. It’s a beautiful film in how it all comes together.

The Birds showed me his horror and thriller side. Movies like Rebecca showed me an earlier side to his work, showing his ability then to create all sorts of compelling characters.  Hitchcock is a director whose work I can study on multiple levels and multiple times and always find something new. 

My favorite of his movies is lighter fare by any standard, and that would be To Catch a Thief. An excuse to put Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on the French Riviera and see what happens? Maybe! It’s not as perfect as some of the other movies I’ve named and it’s definitely lighter, often comedic in tone. But the chemistry of Grant and Kelly, the scenery, and the classic “thief gets blamed for new crimes he didn’t do” setup is timeless. I can watch it again and again and never, ever get bored. Much like the rest of Hitchcock’s work, come to think.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) LEST DARKNESS FALL. A solar eclipse was visible from Europe on August 12. The Guardian shares a gallery: “Solar eclipse 2026 across Europe: in pictures”.

A total solar eclipse swept across parts of Europe and the North Atlantic on 12 August, with the path of totality moving through Greenland, Iceland, Spain and a small section of north-eastern Portugal, while surrounding areas across Europe experienced a partial solar eclipse, according to the European Space Agency

(10) AND THE BANDS PLAYED ON. “During the total solar eclipse of July 8, 1842, an astronomer watched the ground itself start to ripple — thin bands of light chasing each other across open earth in the last seconds before the sky went fully dark, and 184 years later, nobody has proven why” at SpaceDaily.

During the total solar eclipse of 8 July 1842, observers across Europe recorded a strange effect in the final moments before totality: faint, wavering bands of light and shadow moving rapidly across the ground, a phenomenon now known as shadow bands. According to the astronomer and writer George F. Chambers, whose 1902 book The Story of Eclipses is one of the earliest detailed compilations of eclipse observations, England’s Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy, noted “undulations” along the thinning crescent of the Sun roughly six minutes before totality that year. The 1842 eclipse is often cited as one of the earliest well-documented sightings of the effect, though as the astronomy writer Joe Rao has pointed out, “nobody can state with certainty as to when shadow bands were first noted.”

(11) HANDMADE. Viral Hand-Drawn Spider-Man: Brand New Day Poster Artist Speaks (hollywoodreporter.com)

The promotional materials for Spider-Man: Brand New Day look a bit different in one theater in Canada, and the internet is loving it.

A Famous Players theater in Prince George, British Columbia, almost certainly has the most unique movie poster for the record-breaking film led by Tom Holland. It features a hand-drawn illustration by employee Drake Landon that was inspired by the Spooder-Man meme, with the title of the movie written in font strikingly similar to the script in the official promotional materials.

The movie theater did not receive the official movie poster in time for its release, which led to Landon creating an original drawing to be put in its place in the cinema. That was explained in his now-viral illustration, as a note on the poster reads, “Sorry! We never recieved the real posters! Sorry for any inconviniences!” (Yes, with those exact spelling errors and all, adding to the amusement surrounding the sketch.)

Pictures of the poster have gained widespread attention online, with one Reddit post receiving upward of 51,000 upvotes. Landon tells The Hollywood Reporter the reaction to his Spider-Man poster has been “very unexpected,” and he’s “kinda still not realizing how big it is.”…

(12) HARD TO FOLD UP AGAIN. “Scientists create largest 2D map of the universe with 5.6 trillion pixels and nearly 4 billion cosmic objects” at Space.com.

Astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created, offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky.

The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys team, contains a staggering 5.6 trillion pixels and combines more than 263,000 telescope exposures collected over more than a decade. The observations span visible and near-infrared wavelengths, providing an enormous portrait of stars, galaxies and other cosmic phenomena across the sky, according to a statement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) NOIRLab. (You can explore the full data here.)

“It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” David Schlegel, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in the statement. “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.”…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/12/26 I Tell Stories; That Doesn’t Mean They’re True, Does It?

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(1) BUTLER BOOK IS BACK. The Huntington in Pasadena, CA will host “Reading Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Lost’ Novel” on September 2 from 6-8 p.m. Attendees will be able to get Butler’s Survivor, which has been long out of print. Ticket information at the link.

Be among the first to get your hands on legendary speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s novel, ‘Survivor’, out in a new edition Sept. 1.

Returning to print after nearly 50 years, Survivor extends Butler’sPatternist series, telling the story of a woman struggling to stay alive on a warring planet far from Earth. The new edition includes essays from Alyssa Collins, The Huntington’s inaugural Octavia E. Butler Research Fellow.

Gather with fellow book lovers to hear Collins in conversation with Butler scholars Alaina Morgan (USC) and Phoenix Alexander (UCR). Learn more about this exciting novel, the decision to reprint it, and what Butler’s archives at The Huntington can tell us about her thoughts regarding its composition and publication. 

Survivor will be available for purchase. This event is sponsored by Hachette Book Group.

(2) CAN DO. The New York Times tells “How Nigel Farage Ended Up Running Against Count Binface in Clacton”. “Nigel Farage forced a new election in his parliamentary seat after coming under pressure over his finances. His main challenger is Count Binface, a novelty candidate.” In theory this link bypasses the NYT paywall, but it mostly doesn’t.

Count Binface, a man in a trash can costume, was trying to explain why he would be a winner no matter what happened on Thursday in the most high-profile election he’s ever fought.

“Shall we do a little flowchart?” he asked me, gesturing with his gloved fingers.

If you haven’t been following British politics, you may be wondering why I was interviewing someone who claims to be an intergalactic space warrior from the planet Sigma IX. Count Binface is a character played by the writer and comedian Jon Harvey, 46, and he has run in several elections as part of Britain’s long tradition of novelty political candidates.

Now he is heading for his biggest gig yet. He is the main opposition to Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist party Reform U.K., in a special parliamentary election in Clacton, an area on England’s eastern coast….

Count Binface, a candidate in Britain’s upcoming general election, poses for photographers during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Saturday, June 29, 2024. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

(3) LUNCH IS SERVED. “Skywalker Grill opens bookings ahead of hotly anticipated $1B Lucas Museum debut” reports Yahoo!

May the forks be with you!

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced the debut of Skywalker Grill Wednesday, an out-of-this-world restaurant inspired by the essence of George Lucas’ creative workplace Skywalker Ranch.

The long-awaited museum, alongside the Grill, will open its doors next month to the public — art enthusiasts, cinephiles and Star Wars fanatics alike have been anticipating the grand opening of the museum since an official unveiling date was announced in November 2025.

The menu will incorporate locally-grown ingredients to make up its classic American fare. Some options include a Skywalker Ranch Wagyu burger, Dungeness crab cakes, lobster corn dogs, house-made pastas, seasonal salads and communal appetizers…

Skywalker Grill

(4) COULD IT BE…MALARKEY? [Item by Steven French.] Theatre critic Michael Billington adopts a somewhat jaundiced view towards claims that The Game of Thrones prequel The Mad King is ‘Shakespearean’, despite it being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company: “Game of Thrones, Shakespearean? What fools these mortals be!” in the Guardian.

 As a latecomer to Game of Thrones, I am struck by how many people tell me it is “very Shakespearean”. It is as if they need to justify its heady escapism and heavy reliance on bonking and brutality. But its debt to the Bard – apart from the rivalry between the houses of Lannister and Stark – rests mainly on the casting. Watching the first 11 episodes, I noticed four Lears past and to come (Julian Glover, David Bradley, Oliver Ford-Davies and Roger Allam), a Macbeth (Sean Bean), a Hamlet and Henry V (Iain Glen) and a Cassius (Michelle Fairley) among many others.

Because it is presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company and staged by Dominic Cooke, who memorably directed The Hollow Crown on television, we shall doubtless hear the same arguments about Game of Thrones: The Mad King at Stratford. But, although there are frequent nods to Shakespeare, they totally lack the resonance of the original….

(5) FRANKENSTEINLY SPEAKING. “Chris Carter on How the Real World Has Caught Up With ‘The X-Files’” at Gizmodo.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: The director’s cut is billed as being more horror-oriented than the original. But other things have also changed—the movie’s a few minutes shorter, some scenes are re-edited, and there are some musical swaps too. What was the process like as you decided what to change?

Chris Carter: There were things I wanted to put back in to make it the scary movie I always imagined it [would be], but there are also things I wanted to take out…. 

… And when I talk about horror elements, I’m realizing I keep talking about this as a horror movie. It’s really an X-Files horror movie. The original idea came to me when I read a story about a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, who had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, and he did it successfully. I thought that’s X-Files territory right there. So I went and sought this guy out, and he explained to me how he had done it and the process … so [I Want to Believe co-writer] Frank Spotnitz and I set about trying to tell an X-Files story about this very thing…

… I’ll tell you the reason to do this director’s cut. It came out of an experience that I had when I showed I Want to Believe to the executives. They watched it. The lights went up and they were angry. They said, “This is not the PG-13 movie you promised you’d make for us. This is torture porn,” they called it, which is a term often used to reference movies like the Saw movies. But, you know, this wasn’t a Saw movie. This was an X-Files movie. But we had to cut it back to satisfy them…

(6) MONSTER TIMES CO-FOUNDER EULOGIZED. “The Passing of a Visionary: Remembering Larry Brill, Co-Founder of ‘The Monster Times’” — Dream Saga pays tribute. (See Steve Vertlieb’s own account from File 770 yesterday, “Remembering Larry Brill And ‘The Monster Times’”.)

…Larry Brill was not merely a businessman; he was a cultural provocateur. In the early 1970s, the landscape of horror fandom was dominated by glossy magazines like James Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland. Brill and Waldstein envisioned something different: a bi-weekly tabloid that treated the “fantastic” with the urgency and layout of a major metropolitan newspaper.

The Monster Times premiered in January 1972. While industry insiders predicted a swift and expensive failure, the publication defied the odds, running for 48 issues until 1976. It became a cornerstone of the “Second Wave” of horror fandom, providing a platform for serious film scholarship, investigative reporting on special effects, and a training ground for the next generation of film critics.

Brill’s personality was as much a part of the publication’s DNA as the monsters on the cover. A fierce advocate for human rights and an outspoken participant in cultural debates, he ensured that The Monster Times was more than just a fan magazine—it was a reflection of a creative, adventurous, and often provocative spirit….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 12, 1931 — William Goldman. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: William Goldman was a screenwriter par excellence, so you probably think I am going to mostly talk about The Princess Bride in this piece. And you would be right, we’ll start there. He adapted his own novel (which had not really found an audience) into one of the greatest screenplays in movie history. It’s the kind of movie roleplayers quote and reference endlessly, it’s a movie with verve, and love, and drama, and everything that viewers of any age could possibly want. I didn’t get to see it until 1990 or so on a videotape of it. I wondered why the Wonder Years kid was the grandson of an old looking Columbo, but I highly enjoyed it. 

As my mother was a big fan of WWF (at the time) wrestling, I particularly liked seeing Andre the Giant, especially because in a few short years, he would get less and less mobile and capable, but in the movie he is delightfully fully able. The swordfighting scene is a masterpiece, the duelists actually performing the real swordsmanship schools as they are fighting. (Was 7th Sea the RPG born thanks to this sword fighting sequence?).  And so much more.

And Goldman is much more than The Princess Bride. He wrote the screenplay for All the President’s Men although he wasn’t happy with the changes to it. He wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also did the screenplay for a number of other movies I’ve loved…Heat, Misery, Maverick, Dreamcatcher, and The Ghost and the Darkness. His oeuvre was varied, his scripts excellent, and his talent undeniable.  My favorite remains The Princess Bride, but I think you expected that. I’ll blame Vizzini.

William Goldman. Photo by Bernard Gotfryd

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) TREK COMIC. Charlie Jane Anders announces “I’ve Written a Star Trek Comic!” at Happy Dancing.

… I have loved Star Trek for as long as I can remember. Literally, somewhere there exists a photo of me aged seven or eight wearing my homemade Starfleet uniform — which I probably wore to school, let’s be real. I’ve also been a massive fan of Star Trek tie-in media forever. Star Trek is how I first became a fan of the legendary Vonda McIntyre and the iconic John M. Ford. I will always consider Diane Duane’s Rihannsu novels to be the definitive version of the Romulans. I still have a collected edition of the Gold Key comics that I defaced as a small child with lots of terrible doodles and scribbles. I have a complete set of Peter David’s New Frontier novels, along with a smattering of his other Trek books and comics. And last but definitely not least, I’ve been absolutely blown away by everything IDW has been doing with the Star Trek comics for the past few years.

More than any other big science fiction or fantasy universe, I’ve always seen Star Trek as being at least as much about the novels and comics as the TV shows and movies.

So yeah — when I was approached to write a Star Trek comic, I was over the moon. Especially the opportunity to start a title from scratch, with a brand new ship and a mostly new crew, including a few characters from existing TV shows, felt like a massive gift. The comic I’m writing is called Star Trek: Zero Point and the first issue is out October 14. However, if you want to make sure your local comic book store sets aside a copy for you and you don’t lose out, you only have until September 7 to request it. This is a weird quirk of how comics work — they’re non-returnable, so if you really want to read something, you absolutely need to ask for it over a month before-hand.

Star Trek: Zero Point takes place five years after the end of the Picard TV show….

… One thing I can tease about the opening storyline is that we’re visiting an eyeball planet! Long-time readers of my work will know that I am obsessed with tidally-locked planets, meaning planets where one side faces towards the sun and the other side is always locked in darkness. Many tidally-locked planets are believed to be so cold that they are covered entirely with ice except for a small dot of liquid water where the planet is closest to the sun — hence eyeball. To make this work, I ended up talking to four physicists and exoplanet scientists, including a former NASA scientist. I’m super passionate about including real science in this comic wherever I can…

(10) DOGS RECOGNISE HUMAN EXPRESSIONS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  “We should smile at our dogs – a new scientific study reveals why” at BBC. (Subscription required for readers outside the UK.)

 Now scientists have worked out exactly what is going on inside a dog’s brain when it sees a human – even a complete stranger – smiling or scowling.

Their research involved 14 dogs in total who all sat very still in a brain scanner while they were shown pictures of people’s faces.

Photographs of happy, smiling human faces made an area of the brain that is associated with reward “light up” with activity.

This reward circuitry is the part of the brain that is activated when we enjoy and remember good things, like tasty food or praise.

In terms of our own brains, we often refer to it as the “hit” or “high” that is triggered by winning a game or even receiving a positive comment on a social media post….

Primary research for above is here. 

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

Pixel Scroll 8/11/26 Pixelization Is For Insects

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(1) JUST THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS. “City fines company $160k over Avengers: Doomsday Comic-Con installation” reports San Diego’s 10News.

The City of San Diego has fined a company $160,000 for displaying an Avengers: Doomsday sign over the Gaslamp Quarter Archway sign during Comic-Con.

Marvel had hired Elevue, a company that describes itself as a “boutique outdoor media company specializing in street-level signage,” to install the piece over the Gaslamp sign.

The company incurred $160,000 in fines between July 21 and 26.

According to the City, it told Elevue weeks before Comic-Con that they were not allowed to install anything on the Gaslamp sign.

When the company began the installation, the City says it informed Elevue once again that it was not allowed, and asked it to be safely removed.

“They continued construction despite several additional reminders. The contractor knowingly created a safety risk and refused to address it, and was cited and fined accordingly,” said the City….

(2) CLASSIC SHORT TIME TRAVEL STORIES. Ellery Lloyd discusses “5 Great Classic and Contemporary Short Stories That Explore Time Travel” at CrimeReads.

From The Time Machine to The Time Traveler’s Wife, the concept of time travel has inspired novels that blow the mind and break the heart. It has also produced some truly wild and wonderful short stories.

As we read our way through the genre while writing Time to Burn, it became apparent just how often these stories are in conversation with one another—borrowing ideas, twisting them into new shapes and reframing them to create compelling what ifs. After all, who hasn’t daydreamed about visiting the past or witnessing some great historical moment? These stories allow their readers to come as close as they possibly can to really visiting the past—whether that is late Victorian London, the steaming late Mesozoic jungle or Medieval India.

Time-travel tales also allow us to reflect on our own lives too: the choices we’ve made, the paths we have taken and the people we might have become. If we could change something we had done, what effect would that have on us and on those around us? These are the questions the protagonists, and readers, of these extraordinary stories are forced to confront.

Here are five of the best short stories we encountered on our (time) travels.

Lloyd’s final selection is –

Max Beerbohm, “Enoch Soames”

First published in 1916, “Enoch Soames” remains the funniest of all time travel stories. In it the eponymous Soames, a minor writer of the 1890s, makes a ‘strange bargain’ with the devil, giving up his soul to visit the Reading Room of the British Museum a century in the future (on the afternoon of June 3rd 1997, to be precise), in order to witness first-hand what posterity will make of his literary achievements–and is horrified by what he learns. There is perhaps a warning there for all writers!

The story is also, on a more serious level, a reflection on how our sense of the past is shaped as much by what is forgotten or misremembered as what is remembered—and how actually being able to journey through time might complicate that process….

(3) ENDURING WEBSPINNER. Gothamist asks pop culture historian Roy Schwartz “Why we still adore NYC’s very own Spider-Man ‘schmuck’ after a bajillion movies”.

Carlson: The handful of folks who don’t know the story, Spider-Man is a kid from Queens who was raised by his single aunt. Most of the stories involve him balancing his superhero responsibilities with his life as a poor, unlucky-in love young adult. Why do you think that continues to resonate with audiences even after all this time?

Schwartz: I mean, the answer is in your question. How can we not resonate when he’s basically a poor schmuck, which we all are at one point or another?. He is not the hero who gets the girl. He’s not the hero who gets that glorious moment of victory at the end. He’s the hero who struggles and endures. Every time he does the right thing, he pays a heavy price for it. You know, every day is the worst day of his life. We all feel that way sometimes, and I think Spider-Man appeals to that part of us.

The other thing is, he’s a really normal guy. He’s a blue-collar, struggling young guy who makes mistakes and tries to find his place in the world and tries to do some good along the way, and that’s a very far cry from the demi-gods that some other superheroes are.

I think we are at a moment in time where we all see ourselves as caught in this endless struggle, in this kind of hopeless, apathetic attitude towards things, and Spidey refuses to give up. Again, he doesn’t win the day gloriously. He just refuses to give up. He gets hit, and he gets back up again and again, and that inspires us.

But you look at Spider-Man’s arch-enemy – the Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, he’s a sociopathic tech billionaire with government connections. That, to me, seems so relevant. And everything in his world is designed to really reflect what’s in our real world, one step removed. He struggles to balance his relationships. He struggles to do right by the people he cares about. He struggles to find connection, and at the core of it, that’s what Spider-Man’s story is about. It’s about finding connection, about finding love, whether it’s romantic or family or friends, and that’s something we all yearn for and we all struggle with….

(4) SOMETHING WINS, SOMETHING LOSES. Joel Miller reminds readers “Cyberpunk Started as Punk. Then Marketing Won” at Transmissions From Tomorrow.

William Gibson—the “father of cyberpunk” who codified the genre in Neuromancer—was asked in his 1990 interview with Larry McCaffery whether the cyberpunk movement existed at all. His answer challenges the conventional understanding of the movement:

“It’s mainly a marketing category—and one that I’ve come to feel trivializes what I do.”

Cyberpunk is one of the most recognizable subgenres that science fiction ever produced, and it was a marketing ploy.

In 1980, a group of writers formed around a shared frustration with the state of science fiction. The New Wave was beginning to lose steam and the fresh ideas that had fueled science fiction were declining. Except, that is, for that small group of radical, rebellious writers who had new visions for the future.

By 1982, both William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (both leading voices in this group) had stories up for Nebula awards: “Burning Chrome” and “Swarm” respectively. But when both stories lost to Connie Willis’s “Fire Watch”, their propaganda campaign went into overdrive….

(5) MARVEL LOVES STAR WARS. “Star Wars and Marvel Confirm First-Ever Crossover: Here’s What We Know” reports CBR.com. It will be a five-issue miniseries.

The Marvel Universe is officially on track to collide with the Galaxy Far, Far Away, and the crossover of the century is coming soon.

Per Entertainment Weekly, fans got their first look at Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles. This new five-issue limited series is set to begin in January, with Kevin Smith serving as the series’ scribe and David Marquez providing some truly stellar artwork.

“Back in the early ‘80s, I had a subscription to Marvel’s Star Wars comics. And as fun as it was to follow the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han, I always wished that Spider-Man or Doctor Doom could cross over into their cinematic saga,” Smith said of the upcoming crossover. “So when the opportunity arose to actually tell that story, nobody had to Force my hand! I’m ecstatic to be writing Hope Assembles for the 50th anniversary of Star Wars! Many thanks to Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm for trusting me to fly the Falcon and the Quinjet!”…

(6) THE LAST ZAP. “Josh Holloway Unveils One Second After, an EMP Apocalypse Thriller” at Esquire.

My brother-in-law has one of those fancy smart refrigerators. Among its features is wireless Internet connectivity so that he and my sister can use their phones from the grocery store to look inside and see what they’re running low on. They could do the same thing with just five minutes and a pen and paper, but my brother-in-law insists on living every day like it’s Star Trek. It’s convenient, he told me the day they got the thing. But while I’m not a Luddite, I’m still wary of our rush toward the bleeding edge. What’s the hurry?

Well, actor Josh Holloway feels exactly the same way as I do. “I am born a hundred years too late,” Holloway tells me. He’s using his phone to chat over Zoom, but he’s currently hanging out in his camping trailer in the middle of nowhere….

… In one word, Holloway says the movie is a “warning.” “It can happen,” Holloway tells me. “This is why I like the movie so much: An EMP terrorist attack over America shuts the grid. Anything with a chip is done. Burnt. Not coming back. Very quickly, things turn nasty. The supermarkets clear out, and the hospitals don’t work anymore. All the airplanes fall out of the sky. Any car before 1970 stops working.”

The postapocalypse has been in vogue all throughout the millennium. Movies like 28 Days Later, Children of Men, and I Am Legend; shows like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us. They all shape our collective imagination of what life will be like after it all comes crashing down. But Holloway believes One Second After has something new to offer the genre while also giving audiences a good old-fashioned story about resourcefulness and community when the going gets tough.

“It’s a study about what to do,” Holloway says, “and how to survive.”…

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Ray Bradbury Theatre’s “A Sound of Thunder” (1989)

Yes, I’m a big fan of Bradbury with my favorite works being The Illustrated Man and Something This Way Wicked Comes (now that’s horror done properly), but I really do like much of his short fiction as well. (Yes, I know The Illustrated Man is really short stories.) And that is how we come to Ray Bradbury Theatre’s “A Sound of Thunder” which aired for the first time thirty-sixty years ago on this evening.

It was adapted, of course, from “A Sound of Thunder” which was first published in Collier’s in the June 28, 1952, issue and published again in The Golden Apples of the Sun collection by Doubleday a year later. The Golden Apples of the Sun collection is available from the usual suspects. 

Two time travelers paid a hefty fee to Time Safari Inc. to go hunting dinosaurs who would’ve died in a few minutes. This means they don’t alter history at all. But they make a horrible, time stream altering mistake that they were told never, ever to make: don’t get off the marked path. One does and kills a butterfly and changes the stream forever.

Is Bradbury the origin of the oft told meteorological story about a butterfly flapping its wings in China altering weather conditions around the world?  Is this even possible? 

Unlike the latter film with Ben Kingsley which of course was padded out and critics like Roger Ebert saying that it was really bad and yes it gets a eighteen percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes, and six percent there among critics (!), I thought it did a more than just credible job of presenting Bradbury’s story. Given the low budget nature of the series, it carried off the SFX rather well. But then I thought the entire series was quite excellent.

The major streaming services carrying it right now are Amazon and Peacock. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) TED WHITE REMEMBERED. The Comics Journal has published a profile: “Ted White (1938–2026)”. Here’s an excerpt:

… In fact, fate had other plans for White. He served a three-month sentence and was released in December 1986. Shortly before his sentencing, he had gone to Worldcon in Atlanta, where he met Lynda Magee, who would become his third wife. They wrote to each other while he was in jail, and on his release, he met her family. They married in March 1987 and had a son, Aaron, later that year.

Magee’s son by a previous marriage, Spencer Carlin, was eight years old when he and his mother moved across the country to live with White. “Ted and his community of artist/writer/musician friends introduced me to many creative things,” he reminisced on Facebook. “In many ways it was an incredible place to live for a child existing half in this world and half in that of my imagination. I was always treated like an adult amongst Ted and his community when it came to that imagination and inclusion. Ted was respected by so very many and he was incredibly accomplished. I am grateful for the time in my life he was a part of it. Experiences and exposure to this world surely shaped who I became and what I find valuable and important in life.”

White continued to write about comics, science fiction, and music. “He published comics criticism regularly in The Comics Journal in the ‘’70s, ’80s, and ’90s,” Groth said. “He even got us sued for $260,000 in 1983 when he called the comic book artist Rich Buckler a plagiarist, which we won, because he was a plagiarist.” He also contributed historical essays to a number of Fantagraphics collections, and he continued publishing fanzines. Blat, which he co-published with Dan Steffan, from 1993 to 1995, won a FAAn Award (Fan Activity Achievement Award, associated with Corflu) in 1994; he won another for Fan Writer in 1998 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. He ran a small press, QWERTYUIOPress, which published a volume of his jailhouse letters, and in 2023, Ansible Editions published two collections of his editorials and book reviews from Amazing Stories and Fantastic. Music continued to be an important part of his life, as well, and starting in 2004 he played saxophone and keyboards in the improvisational band Conduit.

In short, he did it all…

(10) SASQUATCH SEEKERS.  Andrew Bartlett admires “The surprisingly scientific methods of Bigfooters” at Aeon Essays.

How do you go about capturing a monster? The search for Bigfoot, or Sasquatch – often referred to as Bigfooting – may sound like a whimsical endeavour: an activity of tall tales and cartoonish representations. Yet if you spend time listening to what Bigfooters themselves have to say, you discover a different picture.

We did exactly that. To research our book, Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry: On the Borderlands of Legitimate Science (2026), we conducted more than 160 interviews, mostly with classical Bigfooters, who spend time in the forests of North America, collecting evidence and, as they see it, acting responsibly, rationally and scientifically.

As sociologists of science, we began with a simple premise: whatever one thinks about whether Bigfoot actually exists as a biological creature, Bigfooting undeniably does. If Bigfooting is a community – or set of communities – that are collecting, analysing, sharing, validating and contesting evidence, then Bigfooting is a suitable object of sociological enquiry. And so, we went on our own hunt to track down Bigfooters and make sense of how they themselves make sense of the world.

Before we began our sociological exploration of Bigfooting, we were cautioned that Bigfooters were anti-science. The truth is much more complex. Yes, Bigfooters work in opposition to mainstream institutional science, making claims about the world that do not accord with the scientific consensus. However, our research revealed that Bigfooters are not dismissive of scientific principles. In fact, many are dedicated empiricists who employ methodologies modelled on those found in professional scientific research. As George Eberhart, a cryptozoologist and Bigfooter, explained to us: ‘It’s not a part of mainstream science, it really isn’t. But you can apply a scientific method, or a journalistic method to it, to get some good science out of it.’…

The article covers efforts to gather footprints, hair, other sources of DNA, etc. – without having yet proven anything.

(11) WIRED. SpaceDaily remembers, “In 1859, a solar storm now called the Carrington Event induced currents so strong in North American telegraph lines that operators disconnected their batteries and kept sending messages on the geomagnetic current alone, while auroras lit up the sky over Cuba and Hawaii”.

On the morning of 2 September 1859, telegraph operators along the Boston-to-Portland line unplugged their batteries, watched the acid-slick terminals go dark, and kept sending messages anyway. The wires were carrying a current the sky was pushing through them. For roughly two hours, the storm itself ran the telegraph.

The event that made this possible had begun the previous day, when English amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, sketching sunspots through a filtered telescope at his private observatory in Redhill, saw two beads of intense white light flare above a complex sunspot group and fade within five minutes. Roughly seventeen and a half hours later, a coronal mass ejection slammed into Earth’s magnetic field. According to the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, that night skies from the Rocky Mountains to Panama glowed brightly enough for people to read newsprint by aurora alone.

Auroras were reported over Cuba, over Jamaica, over Hawaii, over Colombia. Gold miners in the Rockies got up and cooked breakfast, thinking dawn had come early….

… The telegraph network of 1859 was the most sophisticated communications system humans had ever built — tens of thousands of kilometres of copper strung on wooden poles across North America and Europe, powered by wet-cell batteries at every station. It was also, unintentionally, the world’s first planetary-scale antenna for geomagnetic current.

When the coronal mass ejection compressed Earth’s magnetic field, the rapid change induced voltages along any long conductor lying roughly east-west. The longer the wire, the bigger the induced current. Telegraph lines were exactly that: long, conductive, and grounded at both ends.

Contemporary accounts of the storm record what followed. Machines sparked. Paper caught fire. Some keys clacked out garbled text on their own. On the Boston-to-Portland line, the two operators on duty — never named in the surviving transcript, which was printed in the Boston Evening Traveller — realised their batteries were fighting the induced current rather than adding to it. They disconnected the batteries. The line kept working….

(12) TRAILER PARK. “The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn”.

When a group of women are mysteriously abducted, it becomes a case right out of The X-Files™️. Years after walking away from the FBI, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are pulled back from the shadows when a federal agent vanishes without a trace. In a case you’d never see on TV, their only lead is a disgraced, defrocked priest claiming to have horrific psychic visions of the crime. Forced to confront the ghosts of their past, the partners must navigate a chilling winter landscape and an even darker human monstrosity. The truth of these crimes is out there somewhere… and it will take Mulder and Scully to find it. The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn reimagines creator and director Chris Carter’s original vision in this all-new director’s cut. Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu August 14.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/10/26 Abandon Scrolls, All Ye Who Pixel Here

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(1) MÉLIÈS FILM SAVED. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] The Library of Congress Magazine’s new issue has an article about a long-lost 1897 Georges Méliès’ short film, “Gugusse and the Automaton”, being found and restored. May contain the first representation of a robot on film. “A Long-Lost Film, Finally Found”.

And a page to watch the film: “Gugusse et l’Automate”.

… “This is one of the collections that makes you realize why you do this,” said Courtney Holschuh, the archive technician who unraveled the film.

Equally delighted was Bill McFarland, the donor who drove the box of films from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to have the cache evaluated.

His great-grandfather, William Delisle Frisbee, had been a potato farmer and schoolteacher in western Pennsylvania by day and a traveling showman by night. He drove his horse and buggy from town to town to dazzle the locals with some of the world’s first moving pictures.

A Méliès film would have been an unforgettable experience to almost anyone in the 19th century….

… Méliès was a devotee of the science fiction work of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and his films often featured surreal, fantastical sets. An image from his most famous film, “A Trip to the Moon” — that of a rocket landing in the eye of the man on the moon — became the image representing early cinema. His 1896 short, “Le Manoir du Diable,” is considered the world’s first horror film.

“Gugusse,” for its part, is a one-shot, one-reel short filmed in front of a painted screen made to look like a workshop in which clocks and automatons were being made. In the film, the magician (Méliès) winds up an automaton dressed like the famous clown Pierrot. Once wound, the clown beats the magician with his walking stick. The magician retaliates by bashing the automaton over the head with a sledgehammer, each blow seeming to shrink it in half, until it is just a small doll. The magician then smashes it into the floor….

…After Frisbee died in 1937, two small trunks of his old projectors and films, along with diaries and papers, went to his daughter (McFarland’s grandmother), who passed them along to her son (McFarland’s dad), who passed them to him.

McFarland didn’t know what was on the reels — they could no longer be safely run through a projector — and after years of searching for a home for them, a lab technician in Michigan suggested he contact the Library.

“The moment we set our eyes on this box of film, we knew it was something special,” said George Willeman, the Library’s nitrate film vault leader.

McFarland, relieved to have finally found a home for his family’s treasure chest, found it all fascinating, the films and the diaries of his wandering showman of a great-grandfather.

“He talks about full houses, and rowdy houses, and canceled shows, and he went all the way to the Pennsylvania-Maryland line, and I think into Ohio as well,” he said. “He made as much as $20 bucks a night, I see in his records, and sometimes he made $1.35 for the night, you know?”…

(2) LOTS OF CASH STICKING TO THIS WEB. “’Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Reaches Stunning $1.67 Billion After Two Weekends at Global Box Office” – Yahoo! keeps account.

Sony/Marvel Studios’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is simply unstoppable at the box office, earning an incredible $145 million domestic and $381 million worldwide in its second weekend in theaters to bring its global total to $1.67 billion.

With $655 million in the U.S. and Canada, the latest “Spider-Man” film has grossed more money before inflation adjustment than any other film in domestic box office history after 10 days of theatrical play. It is now on pace to become the first film to gross $1 billion domestically before adjustment, passing the all-time North American record of $936 million held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Overseas, the film continues to perform very well in China with $186 million, putting it on pace to join the top 10 highest grossing Hollywood releases of all time in that country. That list only has two films released after the COVID-19 pandemic: “Avatar: The Way of Water” with $245.9 million and the Hollywood record holder “Zootopia 2” with $651.9 million….

(3) SOCKS IT TO ME. “Harry Potter fans force power link diversion to avoid Dobby’s grave” reports BBC.

Harry Potter fans succeeded in diverting a multimillion-pound power link between the UK and Ireland after they complained it would disturb a “memorial” to Dobby the House Elf.

The £430m Greenlink interconnector links the National Grid to Ireland via 125-mile cable between County Wexford and Freshwater West, a beach in Pembrokeshire where the death of fictional character Dobby was filmed in the Potter films.

Project manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast the cable was originally “going to go straight through” the tribute, before fans left his firm “hundreds of calls”.

“Actually we went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided Dobby’s grave,” he said.

Ludlam, founder of Etchea Energy, said a BBC News interview about the project had turned into a public relations nightmare after fans got wind of what was to happen.

He told the podcast that during the filmed interview he had pointed out where the cable would go underground, saying: “We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later.

“And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls.”

A colleague told him the nature of the calls, and that “apparently, we’re going to go straight through Dobby’s grave”.

“I said, ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’

“I said, ‘he’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?’

“[The colleague] said ‘no it’s very, very serious’.”

Ludlam discussed with planners “exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anywhere close to Dobby’s grave”.

He added: “A lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy.”…

… The cable diversion is not the first time Dobby’s grave has been saved.

In 2022 the National Trust agreed it could remain in place following a consultation, but urged visitors not to leave souvenirs.

Fans were asked not to leave socks on the mock grave, made of pebbles with messages written on them, because the beach was environmentally sensitive….

(4) DRONE STRIKE DESTROYS HUGE NUMBER OF UKRANIAN BOOKS. “Millions of burnt books show how ‘war of endurance’ is hurting Ukraine” – Reuters has the story.

Viktor Kruhlov, director of Ranok, one of Ukraine’s largest children’s publishers, struggled to hold back tears as he watched pile after pile of his books turn to ash.

“It’s a terrible sight to see books burning,” he said.

A Russian drone strike on Ranok’s warehouse in the northeastern city of Kharkiv on August 1 destroyed about 8 million books, the biggest blow yet to Ukraine’s publishing industry during the four-year-old war.

Publishers say more than 10 million books have been destroyed in attacks on warehouses in recent months, threatening an industry that initially benefited from rising demand for Ukrainian-language literature at the start of the conflict.

As firefighters battled the blaze, Kruhlov said the first explosion at the warehouse was followed moments later by a second at the same spot.

“This was a deliberately planned attack against the book warehouse,” said Kruhlov, whose company prints around one-third of the textbooks used in Ukrainian schools.

Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The attacks on book warehouses and printing houses have resonated deeply in a country where many see the war as a fight for national survival and identity. Education Minister Andrii Butenko described them ⁠as an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian language, history and memory, “everything from which the identity of our children grows.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly questioned Ukraine’s separate statehood and argued that Russians and Ukrainians are one people….

(5) FLAME ON! “Timothy Watches The Thing” – a learning experience at Camestros Felapton.

What if I was very cold and there were dogs? This is the genre they call “horror”. The Webster’s dictionary defines “horror” as “intense aversion or repugnance”, which was the reaction of Mrs Webster when she discovered the dead bird I had left on their sofa after I borrowed their dictionary….

(6) TRAILER PARK. Paramount has released a trailer for Children of Blood and Bone, based Tomi Adeyemi’s 2018 novel. Variety reported that the trailer “introduces Thuso Mbedu as Zelie, a woman with the power to command undead spirits. Her homeland, the kingdom of Orisha, is divided into clans with different magical abilities. Under King Saran’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reign of terror, magic is suppressed.”

The logline: “In the epic fantasy world of Orïsha, a young woman goes on a quest to reclaim the magic that was violently stolen from her people. She and her brother ally with the daughter and son of the king to fight back against his brutal rule.”

(7) TOM CHADBON DIES. [Item by Steven French.] Farewell then Tom Chadbon: “Tom Chadbon obituary” in the Guardian.

The actor Tom Chadbon, who has died aged 80, was a deft character player, blessed with a versatile voice – his naturally light, delicate, melodious vocal register acquired steel and depth when required – and an almost cherubic physiognomy that could toughen on command. …

….He will also be remembered as the inept but dogged detective Duggan in the 1979 Doctor Who story City of Death, helping (and sometimes hindering) Tom Baker’s attempts to thwart an alien scheme to steal the Mona Lisa. A comically imaginative caper, filmed partly on location in Paris and co-written by Douglas Adams, City of Death is a high-water mark for Doctor Who and remains the series’ most watched story: the final episode notched up an impressive 16 million viewers. In a perfectly judged performance, Chadbon was both doughty sidekick and comic foil – playing Duggan dead straight (bar the odd well-timed double take when needed) and being hilarious as a consequence….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Steven Brust’s Brokedown Palace

I asked Brust where Brokedown Palace as a name came from as I assumed it was named after the Dead song, and he confirmed it was.

There are certain novels that I return to from time to time and Steve Brust’s Brokedown Palace is one of them. It’s the only stand-alone novel set in Dragaera series, which runs currently to over twenty-five novels. (I’ve read or listened to quite a few of them.) It leads off the series, and it is also notable for being set in Fenario, the human-populated portion of that world where the rest are mostly not.

The novel is heavily influenced by Hungarian myth and culture, not surprising giving that Brust is of Hungarian descent.  Brust uses that tradition’s folklore to great effect while combining it with family dynamics King László, the oldest of the brothers, is a fair and just ruler along the Princies of the Lands. All live in Brokedown Palace.

Once upon a time, there were four brothers who lived in the land of Fenario. These were the King and Princes of the land, and they lived together in the decrepit Old Palace in the center of the city of Fenario. Ahhh but things are not as they seem as things well become very complicated… I won’t say more than that as it’d spoil things if you’ve not read it yet. And this really deserved not to be spoiled in any way at all. 

This is a more complex novel than Brust usually writes and the characters here actually have more agency, more feel of being actual individuals than that they usually get in his novels including much of this series. That’s a reflection of it being a family-based novel so it feels more intimate than usual.

The art is by Alan Lee which was done for the 1996 Ace edition and later used by Ace and Orb, the latter twenty years back in a most excellent trade edition which is still available as a “new” edition.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2026-08-02T15:03:56.019Z

(10) BIOPHOTONS. [Item by Steven French.] I knew the houseplants were talking about me behind my back! “All living things emit a faint glow. Could this light be useful?” in Nature.

In 2025, quantum physicist Daniel Oblak and his colleagues published images of mice that made headlines around the world. The researchers put four anaesthetized mice inside a dark chamber and pointed a sensitive camera at them. It picked up a stream of photons emitted from the animals’ skin: a light signal too faint to be seen by the human eye, but visible in the camera images as a ghostly, mouse-shaped glow1.

The mice were killed at the end of the experiment, and almost as an afterthought, the team placed the dead animals back into the chamber to image them again. This time, the glow had disappeared; aside from a few remaining spots of light, the mice had essentially dissolved into background noise. Seeing the images was “a defining moment”, says Oblak, who is based at the University of Calgary in Canada. It was as if the researchers had photographed life itself.

The study went viral. The researchers were inundated with messages, from a healer’s claim that his hands emitted light, to eyewitness reports of glowing trees; headlines around the world asked whether auras are real. Oblak emphasizes that the photons he captured have little to do with such claims, not least because the naked eye can’t see the faint emissions. He sees it instead as the mark of a long-misunderstood field finally coming of age: the study of the ‘biophotons’ produced by living cells across the tree of life….

(11) OF ALL THE JOINTS IN ALL THE WORLD. “The Mission Robotic Vehicle launched on July 21 with two seven-jointed arms meant to inspect, relocate and upgrade ageing satellites; after a year-long trip, it is meant to test whether spacecraft can become serviceable infrastructure” reports SpaceDaily.

The launch is complete. The central demonstration is not.

According to DARPA’s July 21 announcement, the spacecraft will spend about a year travelling to geostationary orbit, roughly 36,000 kilometres above Earth. Only after it arrives can the programme test whether one commercial vehicle can inspect, relocate, upgrade and extend the lives of satellites that were never meant to meet a robotic mechanic.

That gap between launch and proof is the story. The Mission Robotic Vehicle, or MRV, offers a plausible preview of future spacecraft as serviceable infrastructure, but the difficult work still lies ahead….

… Each of the two manipulator arms has seven joints and a tool drive. DARPA says the vehicle also carries interchangeable tools, sensors, lighting and flight software designed for close-proximity operations. Planned tasks include inspection, anomaly resolution, satellite relocation and the installation of small propulsion modules called Mission Extension Pods.

The programme says one of those pods could add six or more years of station-keeping life to a client satellite. That is a programme target, not yet an in-orbit result from MRV….

(12) CAPTURED MOON. “Webb telescope finds signs of ancient disaster for Neptune’s moons” – Reuters has details.

New observations of some of Neptune‘s moons and rings are providing evidence of a catastrophe that occurred billions of years ago around the solar system’s outermost planet in which a Pluto-sized interloper caused a celestial demolition derby.

Researchers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the composition of three of Neptune’s small inner moons — Proteus, Larissa and Galatea — and its inner dusty rings, and detected clay minerals that one might expect to find deep inside certain worlds in the outer reaches of the solar system. These magnesium-rich minerals are known to exist on the dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and in some meteorites.

“These minerals require prolonged contact between liquid water and rock to form,” said planetary scientist Ryleigh Davis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and lead author of the study published in the journal Science Advances, opens new tab.

“The moons themselves are far too small and cold for that chemistry to have occurred in place, so the clay had to come from somewhere else — the deep interior of ⁠a much larger ancient world. Finding this material on Neptune’s inner moons points to a catastrophic event in Neptune’s past that destroyed those ancient worlds and exposed their deep interiors, with the small moons and rings we see today re-forming from that wreckage,” said Davis, who worked on the study while at Caltech.

The researchers said the culprit behind this cataclysm appears to be Triton, which currently is Neptune’s largest moon but previously resided farther out in the solar system in a region called the Kuiper Belt. They said that sometime during the first billion or so years after the solar system’s formation roughly 4.5 billion years ago — a chaotic time when the large gas planets were still migrating to their current orbits — Neptune’s gravitational pull captured Triton.

Triton is a bit larger than Pluto, another Kuiper Belt resident, though smaller than Earth’s moon.

After being captured, Triton’s own gravitational forces stirred up Neptune’s original moons and caused most of them to collide with each other. Neptune’s current inner moons eventually formed from some of the resultant debris.

“The interiors of large icy moons are normally permanently hidden from us, buried beneath thick shells of water ice and accessible only through models ⁠and inference. Neptune’s inner moons may be the only place in the solar system where we can directly observe that material, because this catastrophic event essentially turned those ancient worlds inside out,” Davis said.

Triton is the solar system’s only large moon that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet’s spin. This fact provides further evidence that Triton was captured after forming elsewhere rather than forming as one of Neptune’s original moons….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “The Palindromists – A documentary about the World Palindrome Championship”.

The Palindromists is a documentary delving into the world of palindromes–those peculiar words and phrases that read the same backwards and forwards. Explore palindromes in history and meet the world’s greatest palindromists as they see everything backwards while preparing for the World Palindrome Championship hosted by Will Shortz at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

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