Tag Archives: Brian Keene

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 8/9/26 Pixelstrasse Scrollangles 2040: Filers Of The Future City!

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(1) YOU’RE INVITED TO HELP WITH FANHISTORY. The Fanac Fanhistory Project reminds people they will be at LAcon V at the end of this month.

FANAC.org will be travelling to Los Angeles for Worldcon, and we plan to bring our new interactive photo ID station with us.  

In April 2026, we announced that we had revamped our photo galleries. We’ve now reached over 11,000 photos. Photos come from all over fandom, both in space and time. Unfortunately, that means that we don’t always know the names of the people from those spaces and times. We bet that some of you do.  

Mark Olson’s new photo ID software lets you tell us. If you’re coming to LAcon V, *please* come by the FANAC table (near the Fanzine Lounge), and take a look. Among others, we have photos from the collections of well-known fans such as Elinor Busby (thanks to Linda Deneroff), Bjo Trimble (thanks to Bruce Mai), and Bruce Pelz (thanks to Bruce and Elayne), along with others. Help us make these photos more useful to everybody by identifying the people you know that we don’t.

You can start before the con and take a look at the photos online too, at https://photos.fanac.org/ . Any photo with the keyword “Needs-ID” has at least one name missing. Send us a note, with the information including the photo URL to [email protected]. Or at con, come to the table, pick up your Fan History ribbon, and tell us who you know that we don’t. If you have convention or fannish photos for us to put up, bring those too.

And of course, fanzines and Conpubs and recordings: We also plan to have a scanning station at LAcon V, to scan and digitally archive more fanzines. If you’re a fanzine editor, bring your old fanzines to the fan table area at the con. If you have convention publications not already online, bring them too (fanac.org/conpubs/). We will scan them onsite and be able to give them back to you at con. Bring memorable and worthwhile fanzines by other editors as well as your own. We will reach out to them for permission before we put them online.  Bring your convention digital or audio cassette recordings too. We’ll try to digitize the cassettes before the convention is done.

We do have to unstaple the zines to scan them*. If they are perfect-bound, we cannot scan them at con.

If you can, please drop us a note (to [email protected]) telling us what you plan to bring.

(2) RETIREMENT BECKONS. Brian Keene shares his exit strategy in “Letters From the Labyrinth 482”.

Way back in 1995, when I was first writing things with an eye toward publication, I decided that all of my fictional works would take place in a shared universe, similar to the Marvel and DC Comics I’d read as a kid in the 1970s and as a teen in the 1980s. Events in one novel or short story would impact and have ramifications in other novels and stories. Sometimes, characters would crossover. Behind it all would be an uber-narrative. In time, my readership began to refer to it as ‘The Labyrinth Mythos’. I liked that a lot, so I called it that, too….

… And that’s how it has been for the last thirty years, with each new short story and novel and novella forming another puzzle piece in the overarching Labyrinth Mythos.

Now, as I approach age 59 and am eyeing retirement, that mythos is drawing to an end….

…Why end everything? Well, as I said, by the end of this year, I’ll turn 59 and Mary and I will move from Central Pennsylvania to forty acres of forested mountains in West Virginia, where we intend to retire and live out the rest of our lives together. I am downsizing, and I am also acutely aware that I am slowing down. I am proud of the relationship I’ve maintained with my readers for the last thirty years. And just in case my time as a retiree is cut short due to health or some unforeseen circumstance, I want to make sure The Labyrinth Mythos is all tied up with a neat little bow. I don’t want my legacy to be Horror fiction’s version of The Kingkiller Chronicle or A Song of Ice and Fire, nor do I want to end up in a situation where a younger writer and dear friend like Wile E. Young or Stephen Kozeniewski has to finish it for me they way Brandon Sanderson so admirably did for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. The thought of passing away, or perhaps being rendered unable to write, before finishing this uber-saga literally wakes me up at night. I owe it to you to finish it, and finish it I will.

Retirement doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing, though. Far from it. But it does mean that I won’t be strapped to a grindstone anymore, beholden to deadlines and signings and touring. I’ll write when I feel like it, and honestly, I can’t imagine going a day without writing. But instead of writing for seven or eight hours a day, I’ll probably write two or three. (I know that Joe R. Lansdale and Stephen King and others have done something similar in retirement, and it’s something I think has value and nobility to it)….

(3) CYBILS AWARD ENDS. The Children’s & YA Book Lovers’ Literary Awards – the CYBILS – will no longer be presented: “Time to Close the Book”.

(4) FOUNDING BEINGS. James Davis Nicoll extols “Five SF Works About Building a New Nation” at Reactor.

Nations have a natural progression from (presumably) optimistic formation to eventual collapse. Collapse has obvious dramatic potential (see here, here, and here for some examples); thus the many works set amid crumbling or recently expunged civilizations. However, the early days of new polities can be just as exciting….

One of the choices is –

Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster (1982)

By the era that is the setting of Icerigger and The Tar-Aiym Krang, Foster’s imagined Humanx Commonwealth is simply a backdrop, a vast, wealthy, powerful and efficient polity that enables peace and prosperity on a galactic scale. However, a neutral observer might wonder how it came to be. Why would the beautiful insectoid Thranx even consider partnering with hideous soft-skinned humans?

First contact between people and humans goes poorly. Humans are even uglier than the lizardoid Aann and no doubt even more violent. Clearly the Thranx must protect themselves from the humans, who are doubtless egg-eaters. Eccentric Ryo disagrees; perhaps there is some good in these space-horrors. Easy enough to prove… provided Ryo doesn’t mind committing a legendary crime spree.

Every SF author gets their one impossible assumption. In Foster’s case, it is that something lacking an exoskeleton might not be the monster that they appear to be.

(5) TEN BEST. Collider says these are the “10 Most Perfect Sci-Fi Shows of the Last 30 Years”.

…Over the past three decades, sci-fi has continued to reinvent itself, from the craftsmanship of building practical sets when CGI was still in its infancy to imagining alternate versions of Earth where technology has gained the upper hand over society. From a hive mind that sparks an existential crisis to an animated series written by Harvard graduates, here are the most perfect sci-fi shows of the last 30 years, ranked….

At the top of the list is –

‘Severance’ (2022–Present)

Everyone wants the perfect work-life balance, and Severance shows it is possible—at a very intrusive cost. The corporate cult sci-fi series takes the mundaneness of bleak cubicles and fluorescent-lit ceilings and gives it an unnerving twist. To improve office efficiency, Lumon Industries creates the severance chip, a surgical brain implant designed to divide a person’s consciousness.

The device creates two personalities: the “innie,” who exists only in the workplace with no recollection of the outside world, and the “outie,” who gets to live a normal life. In theory, it sounds like the perfect solution. In practice, Severance exposes the inhumane lengths corporations are willing to go to in the name of productivity—a premise that doesn’t feel entirely fictional.

(6) SOUNDS FINE TO ME. “Book hidden in fireplace returned to Australian library 150 years overdue” reports BBC. (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

A book borrowed 150 years ago has finally been returned to an Australian library, with the culprit linked to the Houses of Parliament in London.

Antiquities of Athens was borrowed from a local library in Kiama, a seaside town about 120km (75 miles) south of Sydney, some time in the mid-1870s.

The book on classic Greek architecture was stored in a tea chest hidden behind a boarded-up fireplace for decades before it was recently discovered by a family member.

Ross Simmons, 77, thinks his great-grandfather, John Simmons, might have borrowed the book to help with his career, having worked as an apprentice stonemason in Westminster in the mid-1800s before becoming an architect in Australia….

… Kiama Library staff worked out that the fine would be £97 – or in today’s currency AU$28,000 ($20,000; £15,000), allowing for inflation. But luckily for the Simmons family, the fine has been waived….

(7) DAVE NEE (1953-2026). [Item by Tom Whitmore.] Dave Nee, co-founder of The Other Change of Hobbit and long-term chair of the Safety Committee for SF Pride, died of an apparent heart attack while out shopping on August 6, 2026. He was 73.

Dave was active in the science fiction and Gay Pride communities throughout his life. He was an expert on all types of music, a collector and dealer in several fandoms, and regularly took on major leadership roles. He is survived by his husband D. Scott Marley. There will not be a funeral, but there will be various memorial celebrations at times to be announced. Watch for more information.

Nee published the newzine Sanders from 1971-1972. He was the final winner of the Sampo Award, given annually from 1970-1980 for “previously unrecognized services to fandom”.

Also, here’s a link to David Bratman’s tribute “Dave Nee, 1953-2026” at Kalimac’s Corner.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 9, 1927 — Daniel Keyes. (Died 2014.)

By Paul Weimer: Yes, I am here for one book, but what a book! Flowers for Algernon is one of the most potent and melancholy books in science fiction, but I think that the short story is even stronger in some ways. Both tell the same story, of a man with intellectual disability who is given the brief ability to have human and then superhuman intelligence, but only for a short time. The story shows us his gradual increase in intelligence, erudition and perception. It shows us the keystone, when he reads a book and finds out there is no more to the story, and asks WHY?  

Daniel Keyes

That why is a hinge of the entire story. It shows his breakthrough into the world of thought and cognition. It shows he has transcended (although it will be brief) his disabled origins and can now do more, read more, and be more. But, again, it is at a heavy cost and a tragic end that even if you never heard of the story before, you can guess.  The novel is a masterpiece in showing Charlie’s rise and fall, using the epistolary format to best effect I’ve ever seen (Best Epistolary SF novel ever? Maybe!) 

But the wonder of the story is the path up and then down again, and the emotional bond that the novel makes with the reader to follow Charlie’s story. It’s a novel that makes us feel deeply for the plight of the main character, to cheer for the brief success of the operation, and then the tragedy of its brief effectiveness. When Charlie starts slipping, it’s subtle. And then it becomes a landslide and my heart breaks just thinking of those passages. 

I think the novel was robbed of a Hugo by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Sorry, Bob. Flowers for Algernon is a more powerful, potent and a better book. Period.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED… “Switzerland has more nuclear bunkers than any other country” reports NPR.

From the outside, the Sonnenberg nuclear bunker looks innocent enough: its entrance is in the middle of a children’s playground. But past the seesaws and swing sets, carved into a hill, is a thick blast-proof door that, when opened, exposes a narrow, well-lit tunnel that gently descends as far as the eye can see.

Sonnenberg Bunker guide Zora Schelbert walks slowly down the tunnel toward the main structure of the bunker, built in the 1970s, during the Cold War, to house 20,000 people in the event of a nuclear war.

“Back then, 20,000 people constituted a third of our city’s inhabitants,” says Schelbert. “So every third person in the city of Lucerne was once supposed to be sheltered in this bunker.”

If a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were to happen, Swiss officials reasoned at the time, Switzerland — an historically neutral nation — would likely not suffer a direct hit. But it would be in the path of nuclear fallout from its non-neutral neighbors. So they supplied diesel-powered generators that had enough fuel to power this bunker for two weeks….

…Instead of scrapping its nationwide network of bomb shelters after the Cold War ended, Switzerland doubled down and kept building them, guaranteeing every one of its 9 million citizens a bomb shelter space, just in case. The country has more than 370,000 nuclear bomb shelters….

(11) IMAGINATIVE FOSSILS. [Item by Lew Wolkoff.] This morning, PBS’ Sunday Edition did a feature on the Pokémon Fossil Exhibit that just opened at the Fields Museum in Chicago after a successful run at a museum in Japan. The Fields Museum aselected because of its large collection of actual dinosaur fossils.

The exhibit is in the form of a paleontology dig, with fossilized Pokémon next to similarly shaped, real fossils. The exhibit may have been inspired by an early episode of the Pokémon TV series, where the characters encountered fossil Pokémon.

Besides a number of Pokémon collectables in the museum gift shop, the exhibit features information about bird watching, insect collecting, and other naturalist hobbies. The creator of Pokémon, himself, an amateur collector of insects, and the goal is to encourage attendees at the exhibit to try such hobbies for themselves.

The exhibit will be at the Fields Museum until next April when it will move to another, currently undisclosed North American museum. “Pokémon Fossil Museum – Field Museum”.

(12) DYSON SPHERE SEARCH DETECTS FALSE POSITIVES. “JWST Just Examined Two Stars Suspected of Harboring Dyson Spheres. Here’s What It Found” reports ScienceAlert.

Somewhere in the Universe, an alien culture may have developed the technology to build giant megastructures around stars, harnessing their energy on an unimaginable scale.

First proposed in 1960 by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, the Dyson sphere has become one of the most enduring symbols of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

This is because such structures should change starlight in ways we can detect from Earth – telltale technosignatures that could finally reveal an advanced alien civilization.

Now, astronomers have used the JWST‘s golden infrared eye to put two of the strongest Dyson sphere candidates to the test.

“Waste heat. That is the whole game,” astrophysicist Olivia Curtis of Pennsylvania State University, co-author of a preprint describing the analysis, told ScienceAlert….

…That glow would be unavoidable. Just as a laptop or lightbulb gives off waste heat, so too would any machine that harvests a star’s energy. The larger the hypothetical megastructure, the brighter that excess infrared radiation should become.

That excess is exactly what Project Hephaistos, led by astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson of Uppsala University in Sweden, set out to find. Even false positives could teach us how to better search for alien tech – by revealing the many ways the Universe can mimic it.

The search sifted through roughly five million Milky Way stars looking for exactly this kind of infrared excess – more mid-infrared light than an ordinary star should produce.

Seven stars survived the team’s increasingly stringent tests, with the two studied here emerging as the search’s most compelling candidates.

JWST quickly exposed the two candidates as Dyson sphere impostors – and the explanation was brilliantly simple. The light from both stars was being boosted by a distant galaxy almost perfectly lined up behind them.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Tom Whitmore, Bill, 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 JeffWarner.]

Pixel Scroll 8/2/26 On the Planet 077 Elif, That’s Llorcs Lexip To You!

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(1) CHERRYH SAFE. C. J. Cherryh, who lives with spouse Jane Fancher near Spokane, Washington told Facebook readers today that so far they are safe from the wildfires in their area.

We are ok and still at home. The nearest evacuation-must-go zone is 10 blocks north and about as much on 2 other sides. Our street was an evacuation route and a steady stream of traffic. Our cars are still packed and kitty-cages are piled in the sunroom, but the 50 mph winds have died down and the air is clear where we are. The active fire seems to be west of us. We are going to lose a lot of beautiful woods and even more unhappily, many, many homes, plus some parks and golf courses….the business sector is intact, and the historic north hill houses are intact. Nature when she renews can be a pita, but we are alertly-ok and in our house, which I hope will become possible for many of those that have taken refuge in the public shelter—but many, many families have lost homes with precious little time to do more than run for it; a 50 mph gale driving a fire like that leaves no time even for packing in many instances.

Please share this letter freely; our means of communication are somewhat limited by the situation, and we gratefully acknowledge the many inquiries and wishes for our safety. We are as of this morning safe and the situation seems to be coming under control, with thanks to the organizations and individuals who are still working on this situation, and the firefighters, police and National Guard who have worked through the night to see others safe.

(2) HUGO VOTING DEADLINE APPROACHES. Remember: The Hugo Award voting deadline is August 8 at noon Pacific.

(3) PREDICTING THE NORMALIZATION OF AI BOOKS. Hugh Howey says there was a sweet spot – and it’s over, in “The End of an Era”.

…Which takes me back to my statement about lucky windows. We had less than 20 years of writing being hard and publishing being easy, and we will never get that window back. Ever.

I’ve always felt bad for authors who lived and worked before 2007. The choices unavailable to them made life harder than it needed to be. Getting their work out into the world was brutal. After KDP, that brutality became a choice, not a necessity.

I now feel awful for anyone who wants to tell a story post-2026. You will forever be doubted. If you love an em dash the way I do, or you like flowy run-on sentences like I do, if you grew up reading Proust to let the words flow over you in all their glory, if you memorized sonnets so the iambic pentameter would soak into your bones, you’re gonna sound like a fucking bot.

Less than 20 years. More like 10, honestly. You can argue that 2014-ish was when self-publishing became legit and 2024-ish was when the tools made AI writing viable. A decade where it was easy in the ways it should be and hard in the ways it should be. That’s insane. Ten years across the one-hundred-thousand years of language.

What comes next? I have some predictions, and they are pretty crazy. The first prediction is that publishers weather a few of these big AI scandals, but as years go by, publishers care more about profits and they let things slide. AI books from big houses get editing passes, and later they develop internal tools to roughen up the AI slop, and machine-books appear in bookstores alongside meat-books. This feels inevitable. Brace for this. (Feel free to rage about it as well, if you’re low on cortisol.)

Another prediction is that MOST readers will care about machine-vs-meat as much as they currently care about publishing imprints, which is to say almost none. Book series will go viral and readers will get wholly absorbed and where the story came from won’t matter. There will always be readers pushing beyond the fringe. That’s how fanfiction became viable. It’s why I had a career. There were readers who ignored the assholes saying, “Don’t read that, it’s self-published.” These readers asked instead, “Yeah, but is it any good?” Because of them, I got to write for a living. So I will always have a fondness for readers who search for story, ignoring the stories behind the stories….

(4) CORY DOCTOROW Q&A. [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] I stayed interested all the way through a full hour with Cory Doctorow, mostly about his newest book but ranging over a variety of AI-related topics. He’s surprisingly optimistic about the ability of statistical inference being used to help create art. I enjoyed his optimism, even if I’m not sure I share it. “F@#$ the AI Overlords” at WNYC Studios. Listen at the link.

The race to build the most advanced artificial intelligence continues to dominate the headlines. On this week’s On the Media, who does this new technology actually serve? Plus, how even critical media coverage can feed into the AI hype.

[01:00]  Host Brooke Gladstone sits down with Cory Doctorow, journalist, activist, and author of Enshittification, on his new guide to seeing through the relentless, $16 trillion AI hype machine and understanding the technology for exactly what it is, rather than the outlandish stories told about it.

[16:47] Brooke continues her conversation with Cory, and they discuss how the hype itself is keeping the AI industry afloat. 

[28:47] Brooke asks Cory about his rejection of the notion that AI domination – of our jobs, our lives, our art, and more – is inevitable. Plus, they interrogate the role of the tech in a creative’s life, and why AI art leaves us cold.

(5) EVERYONE MUST GET YELLOWSTONED. Brian Keene’s simple joke with Maurice Broaddus at Gen Con got out of hand. Here’s what happened next, as he explains in “Letters From the Labyrinth 481”.

…Speaking of the bars, Maurice Broaddus and I were talking over drinks on Friday night, when a young lady came over and plopped her Barbie cowgirl hat atop his head. We took a quick photo and he gave her the hat back and I posted the pic on social media with the caption “Congratulations to Maurice Broaddus on landing his new gig writing a Yellowstone spin-off.”

Just the latest installment in an almost thirty year tit-for-tat messing with each other that Maurice and I have engaged in pretty much since the moment we met. But I sometimes forget that Maurice and I have much bigger audiences now than we did back in the day, and not everyone is aware that we relentlessly prank and mess with each other. Maurice forgets that sometimes, too.

Which is why we both spent much of yesterday having to explain to people that he was not, in fact, writing a new spin-off for Yellowstone. I left GenCon early Saturday morning, because I had to get back home and and then back down to WV to do more for Grandma. During the drive, my phone kept buzzing as people called, texted, and emailed to ask if I could give them any more details on Maurice’s new gig. Meanwhile, at GenCon, Maurice awoke to a mob of people congratulating him. By the time I got home (after an 8 hour drive) writers for various fandom websites were getting into the act, so I posted a clarification online.

Anyway… my apologies to Maurice’s fans, and Yellowstone fans. (I have to wonder with some bemusement if Taylor Sheridan’s production team were suddenly fielding calls and emails from the fandom press and staring at each other in confusion and dismay all because some cult horror writer and one of the leading afrofuturist writers were goofing around. If so, then apologies to them, as well)….

Congratulations to @mauricebroaddus.bsky.social on his gig writing the new Yellowstone spin-off!

— Brian Keene (@briankeene.bsky.social) 2026-08-01T00:44:48.727Z

(6) GOSS BOOK RECOMMENDED. A Deep Look by Dave Hook takes up “’Letters from an Imaginary Country’, a Theodora Goss collection, 2025 Tachyon Publications”. Here’s the short take. A longer analysis continues at the link.

The short: I finally read the most recent collection by Theodora Goss, “Letters from an Imaginary Country“, 2025 Tachyon Publications. It includes a great Introduction by Jo Walton, sixteen works of short speculative fiction (it leans more to fantasy and horror but with a bit of SF), and Story Notes by Goss. My favorites are two superlative stories, “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology“, a short story, Lightspeed July 2014, and “The Secret Diary of Mina Harker“, a novelette original to this collection. My overall, average rating for the stories is 3.88/5, or “Great”. Strongly recommended.

(7) 2000AD SCI-FI SPECIAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It is summer in the northern hemisphere and that means it is time for the 2000AD summer special.  The 2000AD Sci Fi Special 2026 this year has the theme of ‘body horror’ as Tharg the Mighty (2000AD’s editor) has been warning us (humanity), since his arrival from Betelgeuse nearly half a century ago now, that we are living in the atomic age and the devastation it can wreck in his futuristic dystopias: mutation, irradiation and an environment changed beyond all recognition. Humanity is a species that, as technology progresses, so too do the threats to our planet…

(For my part, I keep on warning that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens…)

The 2000AD Sci Fi Special 2026 has five thrill-power packed stories that, unless you are prepared, can blow the circuits of the unwary.  We have Judge Dredd tackling the products of a new technology let loose in a Mega-City block.  A story of London in the nineteenth century where a master criminal leads a gang of freaks and semi-supernatural entities in Stickleback.  Another Future Shock SFnal short horror.  Meanwhile, the mutant bounty hunter, Strontium Dog Johnny Alpha is given a Royal Mission by Brit Cit’s King Dickie…

But for me, the highlight was a key episode in Young Death, a tale from Judge Death’s youth before he transformed into a pan-dimensional harbinger of doom to purge worlds of living sinners (as only the living commit crime). (See the original graphic novel.)

This year’s 2000AD Sci Fi Special is guaranteed to liberate those infected with the lesser-spotted thrill sucker with a solid shot of thrill-power. Scrotnig!

The good news is that it does not cost big byms at just £4.99 over here in Brit-Cit, while on the other side of the Black Atlantic, in the land of the Cursed Earth, it is a paltry US$8.99 and most places else in the civilised Galaxy (that’s anywhere that sells hand-pump bitter and real ale, shows independent studio SF films and publishes science Fiction novels) it is only a few Galactic Groats.  Splundig!

(8) TRAILER PARK. “Netflix Drops Trailer for Osamu Tezuka’s Manga-Inspired ‘The Ribbon Hero’” – and Animation World Network sets the frame.

Netflix has released the final trailer for The Ribbon Hero, a new anime feature inspired by Osamu Tezuka’s manga, “Princess Knight,” that streams worldwide on August 8.

The film follows a lone hero who chooses to defy a harsh destiny. In the final trailer, we see Sapphire driven from her homeland, forging bonds with new companions in a distant land, and bravely confronting the looming calamity, Nergal, as the Ribbon Knight. After repeated invasions by Nergal, the people have all but given up resisting. Yet Sapphire refuses to surrender. Donning a veil, she transforms and throws herself into battle with unwavering resolve. Her courage stirs something in those around her, sparking a positive change in the hearts of her companions. Meanwhile, the cryptic character Velvet delivers unsettling lines that heighten the tension and mystery surrounding their true motives.

When Sapphire falters and voices her doubts, it is the words of her companions — those who believe in her — that push her forward. The trailer teases the growth of each character as well as exhilarating action sequences, raising expectations for the film….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 2, 1948 — Robert Holdstock. (Died 2009.)

By Paul Weimer: I am here just to talk about Mythago Wood, and I think that is all right. It’s old enough now that it is slipping out of direct reference in the genre conversation, but it is and was seminal and I can see its influences today. More on that in a bit.

Robert Holdstock

Mythago Wood and its sequels center around Ryhope Wood, a fragment of ancient forest in England. It’s strange and mysterious, it is exactly the sort of place, back in Little, Big, that Crowley would describe as “the further you go in, the bigger it gets”. It’s a place where myths can coalesce into substantial beings, and if you dare to go into the woods, interact with them. The Mythago Wood cycle is mainly the story of the Huxley family, and their encounters, violent, dangerous and passionate, with the Mythagos. The Mythagos generally are born out of Celtic myth or Celtic influenced myth, and there can be and often are multiple versions of a mythago running around in the wood at the same time. I remember at least four versions of Guiwenneth of the Green, for example, only one of them being Guinevere of Arthurian myth and legend. And they need to be treated very carefully and differently. They are not human, they are born out of the myths of humanity. 

The strangeness and inescapable allure, if not outright obsession, that the Huxley family has with the wood and its inhabitants is the story of Mythago Woodand its sequels and prequels. Because, like time itself in the wood being a somewhat fluid and strange thing, the novels overlap and take place in different time periods, rather than being a straightforward narrative. These are novels that, in modern parlance, work on vibes, and the vibe is mythology and deep ties to ancient and often terrible powers.

As I suggested above, I think of Little, Big by John Crowley as a forerunner and an inspiration for this book. Or maybe something was in the water, since Little, Big came out only a couple of years before Mythago Wood.  But since then, Holdstock’s works has influenced other writers. I can see the mythological influence of the Wood and Holdstock’s ideas today upon the work of Paul Cornell, Juliet McKenna, Jen Williams, Gareth Harnahan, and other British writers that handle the mythic, the supernatural, the ties to ancient beings and powers that are not human. The Britishness, that strong sense of place and myth that Mythago Wood has may be a little off putting to people from outside the British Isles, perhaps, and maybe that, too, is why he is not as well regarded. Also, the books after Lavondyss in the series aren’t quite as crisp and good as the earlier ones. The first book may well be the best. 

There need to be audiobooks (and new ebooks) of the Mythago books so that more readers can come to appreciate Robert Holdstock’s work, particularly the original. 

Robert Holdstock. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) BLACK LIGHTNING REVIVAL. “DC Studios Announces Black Lightning’s TV Return 5 Years After Arrowverse Cancellation” reports The Direct.

Black Lightning is heading back to TV under DC Studios, five years after The CW canceled his Arrowverse series. Cress Williams played Jefferson Pierce, a high school principal who secretly protected the city of Freeland with his electric powers. The drama ran for four seasons between 2018 and 2021 and made history as the first DC superhero series with a Black lead.

The comeback happens in DC Super Powers, an upcoming animated series from DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation. New details unveiled at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival confirmed Black Lightning as one of the young students at the Alliance School for Heroes, an academy where kids train to earn their superhero licenses. It marks the hero’s first project under the DC Studios banner, and it reimagines him for a far younger audience than the CW drama.

DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran hosted the animation panel that revealed the new details, joined on stage by Warner Bros. Animation president Sam Register. The student roster pairs Black Lightning with The Flash, Plastic Man, Terra, Aquagirl, and Green Lantern, with the ring belonging to Guy Gardner. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Black Canary, and Mister Terrific all appear as adults who seemingly teach at the academy, and the panel described the show as a “superpowered breakfast club.”…

(12) WHEN WHAT GOES UP COMES DOWN. “A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week”. The New York Times tries to answer the questions, “Flaming chunks of metal crash into homes, farms and parking lots. Who’s to blame? And who pays for the damage?” Link bypasses the NYT paywall.

… Last year, the U.S. Space Force issued alerts for nearly 820 objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The government issued alerts for 110 objects a decade ago.

“The re-entries happen each and every day,” said Mariusz Slonina, who heads space situational awareness operations for the Polish Space Agency. Huge objects weighing a metric ton or more arrive about once a week, he said.

Much of the debris incinerates in the atmosphere or splashes into the Pacific, but when it does not, it plummets to the ground, uncontrolled and unpredictable…

… For now, people are more likely to be struck by lightning than by falling space junk. The only documented case is of an Oklahoma woman who was hit by debris in the 1990s. She survived relatively unharmed.

But those odds are shifting. A study for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration concluded that by 2035, debris from SpaceX satellites alone could kill or injure someone every two years….

… United Nations treaties govern liability for space debris that hurts people or damages property, but those are Cold War relics with limited scope. The U.N. issued guidelines for space debris in 2007, when there were far fewer satellites. Those guidelines are nonbinding….

(13) REMEMBER THE DC-3? [Item by Andrew Porter.] Wonderful article and videos. Not much relation to sff, but I had to share this with you. “I Flew in the Douglas DC-3, a WWII Workhorse of Aviation, Over the Amazon” in the New York Times. Link bypasses the NYT Paywall:

We were cruising at eight thousand feet, low enough to make out individual trees in the rainforest below, when a towering wall of midafternoon cumulus arose before us.

There was no way around it — it was many miles wide — and no way over it because we were in an 84-year-old Douglas DC-3, arguably the most legendary plane ever mass-produced yet one without a pressurized cabin, which limited how high we could fly.

As the plane and the storm closed in on each other, Captain Joaquín Mosquera slid his window shut. When traversing clear skies, he hangs his elbow out of it as if he were driving an old pickup truck down a dirt road. That’s how riding in a DC-3 feels, too: like being pulled by a tractor through the sky….

(14) STEPPING IN IT. “Scientists unearth new clues about ‘Nutcracker Man’” reports CNN.

Scientists have revised the longstanding picture of “Nutcracker Man” — an extinct hominin, or human relative, nicknamed for its large teeth and powerful jaw muscles — thanks to fresh analysis of fossil footprints from a site in Kenya.

Nutcracker Man, whose species is scientifically known as Paranthropus boisei, lived in eastern Africa from about 2.3 million to 1.2 million years ago, and this new evidence suggests that P. boisei was taller and heavier and had more complex social relationships than once thought.

Prior estimates based on P. boisei fossil evidence hinted that males stood about 4.2 feet (131 centimeters) tall and weighed approximately 108 pounds (49 kilograms) on average. Updated calculations based on the length and width of 21 newly identified P. boisei footprints suggest that Nutcracker Man’s size was more humanlike, standing up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and weighing as much as 165 pounds (75 kilograms).

Patterns in the footprints further indicate that the tracks belonged to eight P. boisei individuals who crossed through the site — East Turkana’s Koobi Fora Formation — at the same time, traveling as a group. These preserved prints provide clues about the complexity of their social structure in their lakeside habitat, researchers reported Monday in the journal PNAS….

(15) TWO NOTEWORTHY STEVE VERTLIEB INTERVIEWS. In May, Onstage Podcast devoted its 400th episode to “A Cinematic Journey With Steve Vertlieb, Chronicler of Monsters, Music, And Myth”:

Steve Vertlieb stands as one of the most respected voices in film scholarship, a writer and historian whose work has shaped the way generations understand cinema, classic horror, and symphonic film music. For more than fifty years, his essays, criticism, and archival research have appeared in books, magazines, journals, and international publications. From contributing to the landmark King Kong anthology The Girl in the Hairy Paw to chronicling the legacies of Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Miklós Rózsa, Orson Welles, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Sr., Vertlieb has preserved the stories behind the artists who defined 20th‑century film. His writing has been featured in The Monster Times, Scary Monsters Magazine, Cinemacabre, L’Incroyable Cinema, and the Hugo Award–winning File 770. Beyond the page, Vertlieb has spent decades sharing his expertise on television, radio, podcasts, universities, museums, and convention stages, including NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. His achievements earned him the prestigious Rondo Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award, placing him alongside icons like Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and Christopher Lee. His career also spans Philadelphia broadcasting, voice‑over narration, and documentary scripting for projects such as Kreating Karloff and the upcoming feature Scored to Death. Most recently, his life and legacy were honored in a full‑color profile in the British magazine We Belong Dead, cementing his status as a guardian of film history.

And last year, Amusing Jews with Jonathan L. Friedmann and Joey Angel-Field talked with Steve Vertlieb, “an award-winning writer, film historian, critic, archivist, and poet who’s been writing about motion pictures and symphonic film music since 1969” in Episode 121: “Movie Memories – with film historian Steve Vertlieb”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Paul Weimer, John A Arkansawyer, Steve Vertlieb, 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 Steve Davidson.]

Pixel Scroll 4/28/26 Whisper Scrolls Of Pixel, Let It Be

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(1) LONG TIME PASSING. “Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?” asks the New York Times. (Link bypasses NYT paywall.)

…Even before the rise of A.I. there was a near-extinction-level wipeout of the American book review. It has gotten eerily quiet out there — it’s as if the bees, those kibitzing and sometimes stinging pollinators, have vanished — and few have noticed.

Only yesterday, it seems, nearly every American newspaper, dozens and dozens of them, even in midsize cities, ran book reviews by local critics. The alternative weeklies (I wrote for many of these) had feisty and clamorous and occasionally nutty book sections. “Sometimes an off-the-wall review,” Norman Mailer said, “can be as nourishing as a wild game dinner.”

Time, Newsweek and other weeklies had serious critics who mattered to the conversation and knocked their heads together like bighorn rams. So much of this is gone. The strangulation sounds of early dial-up should have served as warning.

The recent shutting of The Washington Post’s Book World, one of the nation’s last free-standing books sections, feels like the end of something larger. It marks an inflection point in America’s literature, which can’t thrive without serious, fervent and quick-witted criticism: public talk, back and forth, between competing voices, in something like real time. The thin crust of American intellectual life, long flaking, has begun to show bald patches.

It’s a grim business to linger on the numbers. In the 1960s, a good first novel might receive 90 individual newspaper reviews in America and England, the novelist Reynolds Price wrote in his memoir “Ardent Spirits.” By 2009, the year “Ardent Spirits” was issued, he reckoned the number was 20 at best. What would it be now? Two? Three?…

…But here’s a catch with A.I. It’s easy to tell when a reference, or a comparison, or a sentence, doesn’t belong to a writer. Erudition and style aren’t forgeable for long; they still must be earned. As for A.I.’s sleek, space-efficient text, we’ve already grown accustomed to what that sounds like — the flat, consistent tone, the pert little summary bits, the repetitions, the impersonal and fluorescent-lit mood. Reading it, you feel you’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.

It will get much better. Like a Nakamichi Model 500, perhaps, A.I. models will probably someday be programmed to calculate range and trajectory and to spit out rich critical prose….

(2) CENTURY’S BEST MOVIES SO FAR. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Collider named Mad Max: Fury Road tops in their list: “Collider’s 100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century, Ranked”. The list has so many genre films it’s pointless to name them all here. But the next highest-ranked sff film is Parasite at number two, followed by The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring at three.

(3) BERNHARDT Q&A. “William Bernhardt on Comics, Superman, and the Legal Drama Behind an Icon’s Creation” at CrimeReads.

Keen-eyed readers of William Bernhardt’s last novel, Justice For All, might have noticed the dedication: to Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and Bill Finger, three legendary figures in the world of comic books. Published in 2024, Justice For All dives deep into the legal machinations a comic book artist must go through to win back the rights to his characters. The initial idea, that of art vs. commerce, served as a springboard for Bernhardt to explore the tragic tale of Siegel and Shuster….

Bernhardt’s nonfiction tome, The Superman Wars, tells their story. An attorney as well as a writer, Bernhardt spent more than two years researching what Siegel and Shuster endured.

Their initial publisher found himself squeezed out by two men with mob connections—Harry Donenfield and Jack Liebowitz—who benefited from the Superman radio series, movie serials, television shows and merchandise sales. By the time George Reeves donned the familiar costume for the 1950s The Adventures of Superman television series, Siegel and Shuster were practically destitute—fired after having the nerve to sue the publisher in 1947….

…LWH: The mob ties kind of threw me. I didn’t realize the publishers were connected.                              

WB: Harry used to brag about it. He wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest about that. He ended up getting a house on Long Island near Frank Costello. Harry did some rum running back in the day. He was indicted twice for pornography. That was another appeal of Superman for him – doing something that was clearly for children. It was not what those guys called a “Sing Sing job,” meaning it’ll end you up in prison….

(4) CENSORS WILL COUGH UP COOL MILLION. “Huntington Beach ordered to pay $1M in legal fees for censoring library books” reports LAist.

Huntington Beach [CA] suffered another courtroom loss in its culture war battles this week when a judge ordered the city to pay $1 million in legal fees for restricting minors’ access to library books.

The City Council passed a resolution in 2023 prohibiting children from accessing books deemed to contain sexual content in the city’s public libraries. Critics said the policy amounted to illegal censorship, and that it was actually an excuse to restrict books with LGBTQ characters and themes.

In September 2025, Orange County Judge Lindsey Martinez found the policy violated California’s newly passed Freedom to Read Act.

The city had also established a citizen review board with the power to censor children’s books at the library. Voters repealed that review board in a special city election in June 2025….

(5) RARE SFWA EPHEMERA. Michael Capobianco continues his series with “A Brief History of SFWA: The Nebula Awards Report” at SFWA’s Planetside.

Giving democratically chosen awards for writing isn’t easy. When the authors themselves are designing the process, there is additional pressure to make the process “fair.” It was even tougher before the Internet, when nominations and updates had to be mailed. In what was then called Science Fiction Writers of America, a small group of dedicated volunteers carried most of that burden. They were the Nebula Awards Report (NAR) Editors….

…Seven SFWA volunteers have been given the Kevin. O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award because of their work on the NAR: Chuq Von Rospach (NAR Editor 1989–1996), Brook and Julia West (NAR Editors 1989–2008), and Vonda N. McIntyre (NAR Editor 1972–1976). Other members who have taken a turn: C. L. Grant, George W. Proctor, Frank Catalano, Elizabeth Waters, Orson Scott Card, and Mark Van Name.

So, why did the NAR end? Rule changes made the Nebula more and more cumbersome to administer, and the awards were no longer tied to a specific year. Former SFWA President and current SFWA Operations Manager Russell Davis offers this summary: “The Nebula Award rules when I took office in 2008 were extraordinarily convoluted.” In 2009, the nomination process  changed to the simpler one still in place in 2026….

(6) BRIAN KEENE AMONG PLAINTIFFS. Publishers Lunch says “Authors’ Copyright Suit Against Databricks Will Continue”. (See the Complaint filed with the court at the link.)

Another copyright lawsuit from authors against a tech company for AI training is allowed to continue in Northern California federal court, a judge decided. Plaintiffs Stewart O’Nan, Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, Rebecca Makkai, and Jason Reynolds claim that MosaicML, which provides training data for AI companies and is owned by Databricks, used the Books3 dataset to train their own large language model, called MPT, and Databricks’s LLM, called DBRX.

Judge Charles B. Dreyer denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, stating “Defendants may ultimately prevail on this issue, but for now, Plaintiffs’ allegations are sufficient.”

The tech company did succeed in getting an earlier version of the authors’ complaint dismissed last year, stating that the claims weren’t specific enough.

(7) STEVE MASLOW (1944-2026). Oscar-winning re-recording mixer Steve Maslow died April 28. The Hollywood Reporter profiles his career here: “Steve Maslow Dead: ‘Empire Strikes Back,’ ‘Lost Ark’ Sound Man Was 81”.

Steve Maslow, the top-notch re-recording mixer whose seven Oscar nominations for best sound included wins for The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Speed, has died. He was 81.

Maslow died Monday at a therapy facility in West Hills after a battle with cancer, his wife, Ronna Maslow, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The Los Angeles native also landed Oscar noms for his work on Dune (1984), Waterworld (1995), Twister (1996) and U-571 (2000).

Maslow did 200-plus features during his career, teaming with fellow mixer Gregg Landaker on more than 130 of them, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). He specialized in dialogue and music while Landaker focused on sound effects, and he shared all his Oscar noms with him with the exception of Dune.

“Maz” also collaborated with John Carpenter on Escape From New York (1981), Halloween II (1981), The Thing (1982), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Christine (1983), Starman (1984) and Escape From L.A. (1996) and with Tim Burton on Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Batman Returns (1992)….

… He segued into the movie business and worked on four films released in 1978, including the documentary The Last Waltz, and other music films followed, including Hair (1979), The Kids Are Alright (1979), Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and Stop Making Sense (1984).

Before he knew it, Maslow was working with producer George Lucas on More American Graffiti (1979), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and picking up Oscars in consecutive years.

Maslow’s impressive film résumé also included The Wanderers (1979), 10 (1979), Ordinary People (1980), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), My Favorite Year (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), Teen Wolf (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Children of a Lesser God (1986), Angel Heart (1987), Broadcast News (1987), The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), Pet Sematary (1989), Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), Patch Adams (1998), Bruce Almighty (2003), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Rocky Balboa (2006), The Town (2010), The Great Gatsby (2013), The Conjuring (2013), Non-Stop (2014) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). There are too many movies to mention….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

April 28, 1948 — Terry Pratchett. (Died 2015.)

By Paul Weimer: It took a second bite at the apple for me to fall for the works of Terry Pratchett.  My first attempt was in the 90’s, when I had vaguely heard about his work, and picked up The Color/Colour of Magic.  I thought it was fine and I also tried the Light Fantastic and Sourcery.  But it really didn’t gel for me. I thought at the time Pratchett was an okay writer, and maybe the humor wasn’t quite what I was looking for in fantasy at the time.  (To be fair, the humor in those early Discworld novels is a lot broader than the later more refined ones). 

Terry Pratchett in 2011.

It took over a decade and my late friend Scott to get me to try Pratchett again.  Scott was passionate about a number of writers. Zelazny, which we had in common. Lois M. Bujold, which we also had in common. Michael Scott Rohan. And Terry Pratchett.  Scott encouraged me and “talked me through” finding where I would best enjoy Pratchett’s oeuvre.  I found an affinity for Pyramids (and the best Mathematician on all of Discworld), but when it came to The Night Watch, I really started understanding the Discworld Project and what it was doing.  From then on, Pratchett was on auto-buy.  Vimes and company remained my favorite, although The Librarian is probably my single favorite minor character, if only for the fantastic idea of L-Space. 

Beyond Discworld, there is also Good Omens of course, and also the Long Earth series. The latter feels a lot more the work of his co-author Stephen Baxter than Pratchett but there are moments, scenes, images where the utter magic of Terry Pratchett’s work and writing and humanism comes through. 

One of my not-in-a-Pratchett bits that involves Pratchett is a bit in the late Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End. In that novel, in its (now a) alternate history, Pratchett went on to write many many more Discworld novels, and became so popular that people would use VR to cosplay as being from the new area of the Discworld these imaginary novels were set (basically an entrepot more along the lines of Alexandria, Egypt).  I could wish, Zelazny style, to walk into that world and bring home copies of those “lost” Pratchett novels. I would love to read them. 

And, sadly I never got to meet him in person. My loss. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) NOT AFRAID OF NEEDLES. “Man breaks Marvel comic book heroes tattoo record” – BBC has the count. (Subscription required for readers outside UK.)

A man has broken the Guinness World Record for the number of Marvel comic book characters tattoos.

Tom Radford, from Hull, has 63 of the superheroes covering most of his body.

The 40-year-old said he has spent more than £18,000 and 350 hours under the needle getting the work done. 

He started with an image of Thanos in 2016 and managed to meet the actor Josh Brolin who plays the character in New York, adding his autograph to the body art.

Radford describes himself as a Marvel obsessive who collects “anything and everything Marvel-related”.

“When I got Thanos tattooed I wanted it placed at the top of my thigh because if it wasn’t perfect I could always hide it,” he said.

“Needless to say it was better than perfect and the urge for more began.”…

(11) ANIMATED STRANGER THINGS SPINOFF RENEWED. “‘Stranger Things: Tales From ’85’ Renewed for Season 2 at Netflix — Showrunner Eric Robles Teases What’s Ahead” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Netflix has renewed the Duffer Brothers’ animated spinoff Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 for a second season. 

The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively reveal that the series, from animation veteran and showrunner Eric Robles, will return to Hawkins and the Upside Down sometime this fall. The show’s renewal comes just four days after season one’s debut, which saw Tales From ‘85 take the No. 7 spot on the streamer’s global top 10 list with 2.8 million views.  

The 10-episode first season has also officially landed in Netflix’s top 15 animated series debuts of all time. The spinoff’s renewal and season one success comes just four months after Stranger Things proper — the Duffer brothers’ original live-action series — concluded its decade-long, five-season run at the end of 2025. Following the release of that massive final season, the Stranger Things franchise has continued to perform across social media and with audiences….. 

(12) LOVE TO SHOVE. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] You thought your luggage was treated badly before? “Humanoid robots to become baggage handlers in Japan airport experiment” reports the Guardian.

Japan’s famously conscientious but overburdened baggage handlers will soon be joined by extra staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – although their new colleagues will need to take regular recharging breaks.

Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May, with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage.

The Chinese-made humanoids will move travellers’ luggage and cargo on the tarmac at Haneda, which handles more than 60 million passengers a year.

JAL and its partner in the initiative, Japan Airlines GMO Internet Group, hope the experiment – which ends in 2028 – will lessen the burden on human employees amid a surge in inbound tourism and forecasts of more severe labour shortages.

In a demonstration for the media this week, a 130cm-tall robot manufactured by Hangzhou-based Unitree was seen tentatively “pushing” cargo on to a conveyer belt next to a JAL passenger plane and waving to an unseen colleague.

The president of JAL Ground Service, Yoshiteru Suzuki, said using robots to perform physically demanding work would “inevitably reduce the burden on workers and provide significant benefits to employees”, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Suzuki added, however, that certain key tasks – such as safety management – would continue to be performed by humans….

(13) BIG SQUEEZE. “Could the moon ever be blockaded? Experts predict cislunar space could be the next Strait of Hormuz” at Space.com.

…The closure of the Strait of Hormuz should inform our thinking about inhabiting the moon and defending cislunar space, said Feldman and Hugh Taylor, also a co-founder of the [Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy & Governance]. They authored the 2025 book Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit.

“Just as the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway, cislunar space, though seemingly large, actually contains a few unique and exclusive points of transit through which all lunar travel must pass,” said Feldman.

Like the Strait of Hormuz, cislunar space is a critical, strategic passage, Taylor and Feldman explained. “If it falls into the wrong hands, all of NASA’s and Elon Musk’s nascent lunar enterprises — the first steps in a multi-trillion dollar space economy — may have to be written off.”

Could cislunar space be shut down or interdicted in a similar way in the future?…

(14) I PREFER MY UNIVERSE LUMPY. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] …like us lumpyproletariat. “100-year-old assumption about the universe may soon be overturned” in New Scientist. (Subscription required.)

Assumptions that physicists have made about the universe for over a century may be about to be overturned. Evidence is emerging that it is far lumpier than we had thought – a finding that could solve some of today’s most puzzling cosmological mysteries.

When modelling the universe, cosmologists can’t describe every single galaxy, so they make simplifications. Typically, they assume that the universe on the largest scales is homogeneous and isotropic, meaning that it is roughly the same no matter where you look….

(15) HELP WANTED. NASA Science says “You Can Help Humans Thrive in Space” through volunteer work.

The second Artemis mission took four astronauts around the moon and back – the first crewed deep-space flight since 1972. Not everyone gets a chance to put on a space suit, but you can still be an important part of NASA’s human space exploration story by doing NASA science!

Volunteers with NASA’s citizen science projects have tested chili pepper plant varieties to grow in space, monitored active regions on the Sun, and analyzed data from experiments on how life adapts to the low-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Participation does not require citizenship in any particular country – you only need a love of science and a desire to help. Join one of the projects below and help NASA make space travel safer and healthier.

Here’s one example of a NASA project:

Are you a classroom teacher for students in grades 6-12? Through Growing Beyond Earth, middle and high school students and their teachers collaborate with Fairchild Botanical Garden scientists to grow candidate plants that are being evaluated as astronaut food. Today, on the International Space Station, astronauts tend to some of the same experimental leafy greens and hot pepper plants to unlock the secrets of how best to space farm terrestrial species. On really long missions, it won’t just be a question of easing the monotony of packaged/prepared foods – astronauts will have to grow their own food to supplement their diets. Sign up here to learn more.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/12/26 “Open The Cat Flap, HAL”

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(1) YOU CAN CHECK IN ANY TIME YOU LIKE. Brian Keene sends greetings from “Hotel Hell” in Letters From the Labyrinth 466.

…Greetings from The Verve, a hotel on the outskirts of Boston that is part of The Tapestry Collection by Hilton. The hotel’s full, official name is The Verve Hotel Boston Natick Tapestry Collection by Hilton which is an unwieldy mouthful of mish-mash, but oddly suitable for lodging that feels like it was designed by a bunch of TikTok influencers using AI while micro-dosing on some new hallucinogenic drug nobody over the age of 25 has ever heard of.

It is 4am on Saturday morning as I write this, and I am unhappy because there is no coffee to be found in the hotel, except for the coffeemaker in my room, which I dare not use because the latest TikTok lifehack trend involves young people putting their dirty underwear inside their hotel room coffeemakers and then running hot water through them to clean the soiled item of clothing. And this has the vibe of the type of hotel such a person would be attracted to, so I’d be a brain-damaged fool to use the hotel room coffee pot.

The hallways and corridors are filled with random kitsch and pop art, but again, it all distinctly feels one step removed from any sort of human design. There are random candle shrines devoted to Ozzy Osborne and Hulk Hogan, complimented by framed print-outs of their Wikipedia pages on lime green and neon pink copier paper. There is a random Honda motorcycle in the lobby, along with framed pictures of James Dean, Evel Knievel, and Batgirl hanging behind it (all posed on motorcycles which are not, in fact, the Honda), and a sign advertising the bike as a ‘Selfie Zone’….

(2) BUJOLD AND KRITZER EVENTS. Don Blyly announced two upcoming signings at his Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s Minneapolis bookstore.

Lois McMaster Bujold will be signing at the Uncles on Saturday May 16 from 1-2 pm for Penric’s Intrigues, an omnibus reprint of Assassins of Thasalon + Knot of Shadows.  A lot of people have already ordered The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, the next Penric book, which is a signed numbered hardcover at $48.00 that was supposed to be a February release.  In late March I e-mailed to the publisher to ask when he thought I would receive this “February” title.  He said that his printer has been having production problems and has been late on lots of books.  He is hoping to see the book sometime in April, but might not have it until May.  Another new Bujold book is Two Tales, a collection of two Vorkosigan stories that had previously been published.  “Winterfair Gifts” is a short story that appeared in Irresistable Forces edited by Catherine Asaro in 2004.    Flowers of Vashnoi is a novelette that Subterranean Press published in hardcover in 2019 and has been out-of-print for years, and goes for high prices on the internet.  I haven’t yet received Two Tales but have received the e-mailed invoice and will probably see the book in the next two or three days, and expect the price to be $13.50.

Naomi Kritzer will be signing at the Uncles on Saturday June 27 from 2-3 pm for Obstetrix, a thriller about a OB/GYN who is kidnapped by a fundamentalist cult in the west to provide medical services to their pregnant population.  Doctor Liz tries to find a way to escape while also dealing with her patients’ medical needs.

(3) SPACE JUNK MAGAZINE. The New York Times recommends “A Magazine for Earthlings Who Dream of Outer Space”. (Link bypasses the NYT paywall.)

As Artemis II lifted off last week, sending NASA astronauts on a 10-day swing around the moon, another cosmic venture was preparing to launch: Space Junk.

It bills itself as the first magazine to look at the culture of space travel — not just astronauts and prospective space tourists, but meteor hunters, stargazing communities and sci-fi fans.

The timing seems right. The first issue will come out in May, shortly after the Artemis crew’s scheduled return from its exploratory mission. China is also aiming for a moon landing, as is the next Artemis mission, and the billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are also reaching for the stars with their rocket companies….

… Space Junk is not a science magazine like Air & Space from the Smithsonian but rather a kind of art book, planned to be published annually. It’s more interested in aesthetics and emotional experiences than, say, recent findings in quantum mechanics….

(4) RALLY ROUND KURTZMAN. “Starfleet Academy Actor Defends Star Trek Producer Alex Kurtzman” reports Sci-Fi and Fantasy Gazette.

With speculation mounting that Alex Kurtzman may soon be out of a job as main creative leader of Star Trek, Starfleet Academy actor Karime Diane has come to the showrunner’s defense. In a post on Instagram, Diane, who plays queer Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag in Starfleet Academy, posted about his experience working with Kurtzman the past two years, and how the showrunner helped bring his character to the forefront of the series.

“In the context of this character, Jay-Den, the fact that Jay-Den is a gay Klingon is not an accident. It was the result of very thoughtful processes,” Diane said in his video, defending the idea that Star Trek has always pushed boundaries with its characters. “It is because there are people behind the scenes, including Alex Kurtzman, who really believe that Star Trek should continue to expand. Star Trek has existed for 60 years. It’s always believed in pushing things forward. In the 60s, that looked one way. In the 90s, pushing things forward looked different. And today, pushing things forward, again, always looks different in every single decade.”

The actor acknowledged that not everyone may agree with Kurtzman’s creative decisions, but expressed admiration for his passion for the franchise and recognized that being a showrunner for a franchise as big as Star Trek is no easy job.

“I understand not every single person is going to agree with every single creative decision,” he continued. “That’s fair. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But what I can say for a fact is this: Alex Kurtzman is a hardcore Trekkie. Like, he’s a huge fan. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. And he has one of the hardest jobs of being the captain of this ship, whose goal is to keep this universe alive for a completely brand new generation.”…

(5) SAMURAI ON DISPLAY. [Item by Steven French.] Filers who happen to be in London might want to check out this exhibition at the British Museum which I am told (I haven’t visited it myself) also includes Darth Vader’s costume: “Samurai”.

The modern mythology of the ‘samurai’ emerged gradually across the 20th century through interactions between Japan and the wider world, with idealised images of the historical warriors increasingly consumed by foreign visitors. 

The story of the evolution of the samurai is told through battle gear such as the suit of armour sent by Tokugawa Hidetada to James VI and I, as well as luxury objects such as an intriguing incense connoisseurship game. From a Louis Vuitton outfit inspired by Japanese armour, to the popular, loosely historical videogame Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the exhibition explores the samurai’s enduring legacy in games, fashion and film.

This major exhibition is a candid look at the real men and women whom we know as samurai, from the battlefields of medieval Japan to the global pop culture of today.

(6) DESSERT FIRST. Michael Chabon holds forth on the topic of “Having One’s Cake” at Tragic Magic.

…Anyway, when I came downstairs to see about dinner, I found myself unable to rid myself of the idea that a nice piece of cake might be just the thing. And I knew, to my core, that if I were jonesing this hard for cake, my wife must be in a very bad way, indeed. But the neighborhood bakeries had all closed by now, and outside it was pouring down rain, and though the exact nature of the cake whose surprise appearance had just been applauded by the characters in our book had been left to the imagination— “chocolate” was the lone detail provided—the imagination was pretty sure that it had not been Doordashed from Safeway, in a polyethylene clamshell.

The imagination and I reviewed the available alternatives. I could bake a nice layer cake—a “sandwich,” as they were known on the British baking show—but I knew from experience that even the most powerful yearning for a piece of cake rarely survives the time needed to bake one from start to finish, cooling times and all. Also: no matter what kind of cake I decided on, I knew, I was likely to be missing or running low on some needed ingredient or other: pecans, say, or dutch-process cocoa.

Cake mix? suggested the imagination, a little plaintively.

Now, I am not a mix-cake snob—far from it. Mr. Duncan Hines and I are old friends, and I will never say no to a slice of the man’s basic Yellow (though I will have no truck with his frosting, the kind that comes in a tub and can be used, in a pinch, to lubricate the rails of a rocket launcher). I have known the arcane thrill of practicing that essential trick of twentieth-century industrial food alchemy, immortalized in the lyrics to Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” of adding pudding mix to the cake mix….

(7) TODAY’S NIGHT.

“Yuri’s Night” – April 12 — is explained at Days Of The Year.

During the 20th century, space travel was considered to be the final frontier for the billions of humans living on Earth. Space exploration included sending humans into space, putting men on the moon, and eventually creating space shuttles and space stations.

This day, also known as the International Day of Human Space Flight, reflects on the progress made in space exploration and its benefits for humanity’s well-being and sustainable development​​​​​​.

Beyond the headline moments, it also nods to the quieter wins that come from learning how to live, work, and solve problems in an environment that does not forgive mistakes: better materials, safer engineering practices, improved medical monitoring, and a deeper understanding of Earth itself through satellites and observation.

One of the most significant accomplishments of the “space race” was when an astronaut became the first human to enter space. But that’s not all!

From Gagarin’s pioneering orbit around Earth to the numerous missions that followed, including the first woman in space, the first moon landing, and the first international space mission, this day celebrates them all! Yuri’s Night tends to hold two ideas in the same gloved hand: genuine awe at what humans can build and a playful sense that space is for everyone, not just people with flight suits, acronyms, and carefully practiced radio voices.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 12, 1973 — J. Scott Campbell, 53.

J. Scott Campbell is a comic books artist best known for his work on Wildstorm Comics. Scott actually got hired by Wildstorm by submitting a package that included a four-page WildC.A.T.S  story. Before that however his first work was on Homage Studios Swimsuit Special at age twenty. It’d get a PG-13 rating today.

So did you know that Marvel did a Swimsuit issue as well? It was an annual magazine-style publication from 1991 to 1995. One issue said “Take Wakanda Wild Side” on the cover. Really it did. 

His subsequent work for Wildstorm included  some illustrations in WildC.A.T.S Sourcebook and Stormwatch #0. I love the idea of #0 issues. Why so? 

Now do you remember Gen13? He created the series along with Jim Lee and Brandon Choi as the series came out of Team 7, a series that Lee and Choi created. The series involved a group of spandexed clothed metahuman teens. I like that series but it wasn’t nearly as fun as Danger Girl, his next series.

That series followed the adventures of a group of female secret agents, made the most of Campbell’s talents which involved very well-endowed women,  in the firm of three sexy female well weaponized secret agents — Abbey Chase, Sydney Savage and Sonya Savage and over the top action sequences.  

Twenty years ago I read Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, which is a bit of an overstatement as it’s only two hundred and fifty-six pages long, but it’s still a lot of a fun. Yes, it’s still available.

Danger Girl has been continuously published since it was first came out twenty-six years ago, so there’s a lot of it now. I’ve read quite a bit of it over the years and it’s been pretty consistent in its quality. However only the first seven-issue series is illustrated by Campbell. 

Campbell illustrated the covers to the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash six-issue limited series.

Eighteen years ago, Marvel Comics announced that he had signed an exclusive contract to work on a Spider-Man series with writer Jeph Loeb. Yes, he did just covers, not interior work. 

J. Scott Campbell

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) OH HOW I HATE TO GET UP IN THE MORNING. NPR chronicles “The history of the out-of-this-world playlist NASA uses to wake up mission crews”.

It’s become a tradition: NASA’s ground control plays music to wake up the astronauts on a mission. NASA’s chief historian Brian Odom shares the history of the practice….…LEILA FADEL, HOST:

This is “Sleepyhead” by an artist who goes by the name Young & Sick. It was the crew’s first wakeup call of the mission. A few Earth days later, it was this hit by Chappell Roan.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PINK PONY CLUB”)

CHAPPELL ROAN: (Singing) I can hear your Southern drawl a thousand miles away, saying, God, what have you done?

MARTÍNEZ: “Pink Pony Club” was a wakeup song this weekend, but apparently the recording cut off after a minute or so. Ground control could hear that commander Reid Wiseman was audibly disappointed….

(11) ASTROFELINE REMEMBERED. “Félicette has landed! Memorial for first cat in space unveiled in France” – Space.com has details.

A new memorial for the first and only cat to go to space has arrived at its permanent home. 

A bronze statue of the space cat now stands at the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France, two years after Matthew Serge Guy, a creative director and space cat fan in London, launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised about $57,000 to fund the project.

The memorial honors a French feline named Félicette who launched on a brief suborbital spaceflight in 1963. Although the space cat survived the 15-minute mission, she died about two months later when scientists removed electrodes from her brain to investigate how spaceflight affects the brain. 

A commemorative “autographed” postcard produced by CNES, the French space agency, pictures and celebrates Félicette. (Image credit: CNES)

(12) THE SHAPELESS THINGS TO COME. [Item by Steven French.] For some reason this reminded me of a certain Terminator movie! Here’s the summary: “Liquid metals for the booming of space exploration” at Cell Press Blue.

Liquid metals (LMs) are becoming central to tackling many extreme technical bottlenecks facing space exploration. The unique microgravity and vacuum environment of space also poses big challenges and is an unprecedented laboratory to explore unknown sciences. This perspective presents an overview of the fundamentals and practical issues and envisions future opportunities for LMs in space exploration, focusing on their roles in energy systems, deep space propulsion, thermal management, flexible electronics, reconfigurable machines, additive manufacturing, life support systems, and space optics, among others. Beyond practical engineering, we further outline the potential to exploit the space environment as a unique and indispensable platform to probe LM interfacial physics and chemistry free from gravitational constraints. Prospects for disclosing microgravity-related self-organization phenomena and thus enriching fundamental breakthroughs are interpreted. Collectively, these insights establish LMs as not only generalist materials but also transformative enablers for the booming of future space science and technology…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Live, from the wrong side of the moon, it’s Saturday Night!!!! – “Artemis II”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/25/26 I’m Pretty Sure The Snark Was The Pixel. We Might Need A Full Dissection Of All Four (The Snark, The Pixel, The Scroll, And The Boojum) To Be Sure

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(1) GREG KETTER FOLLOW-UP. Yesterday DreamHaven books founder Greg Ketter’s Minneapolis protest video went viral, seen by millions.

Today, Ketter thanked Facebook readers for their support in social media, as well as the untold number of sales through DreamHaven’s online service.

I’m overwhelmed…would be an understatement. I truly appreciate all the words and actions of support people have shown. DreamHaven is a small operation; we’re closed on Sundays (I rest sometimes) and our website is not used to handling so many orders. We’ll be back in the store on Monday morning and we’ll be happy to sort out everyone’s orders, questions and comments then. Until then, I’m resting up a bit and calming myself down from my anger and sadness. Be well and safe everyone.

(2) NEVER HEARD OF IT. Brian Keene is disappointed by the lack of marketing for recent horror films, and the way that might rebound on the genre, in Letters From the Labyrinth 456.

…None of us would have even known there was a new Silent Hill movie out in theaters if author Wesley Southard hadn’t told me earlier in the week. I don’t know what the marketing budget was for this film, but it must have been nonexistent, because I’ve seen exactly zero advertisements. Nothing on TV. Nothing on social media or YouTube. Nothing in print. Now, you could say, “Well Brian, you and Mary aren’t the target age demographic for the movie” but I’m not sure that’s true. Mary has been a fan of the franchise since the original game back in 1999. But ev en if we allow for “They targeted a younger audience” — my sons are 34 and 17 (almost 18), respectively, and neither of them had seen any advertisements for the movie. And they consume media very differently than we do.

The marketing didn’t exist. Or, if it did exist, it failed. There were exactly two other people in the theater with us for a Friday evening showing. And you can’t blame the storm because that was still 24 hours away, minimum.

We saw a poster for another horror movie called Primate, which none of the four of us had heard of either. It was showing in the theater next to ours. I poked my head inside and there were exactly zero people in the audience, even though the movie was in mid-showing.

So… that’s two horror movies debuting in theaters this weekend with seemingly no effort spent on marketing.

Then add the absolute disaster that has been the marketing campaign for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Reddit and social media are full of literally thousands of people — including many self-identifying fans of the franchise — who claim they were unaware this was a new, fourth film in the franchise, and simply assumed it was a rerelease of the movie that came out last year. That is an abysmal performance for any sort of marketing department or advertising firm. Compounding matters is the fact that moviegoers are still expressing that lack of awareness as the film is now in its second week at the box office.

What we are seeing here is what we saw during the last two horror crashes — marketing departments assume that horror fans will go see anything, and so they don’t put anything into promoting it to a wider audience. But horror fans have a glut of new content available at home — streaming movies and shows, books, video games, etc. If they don’t know something is available, or worse, if they think it’s a movie they already saw, they’re not going to show up and spend money. And then, you get a sudden spike of horror films not doing well at the box office and the suits in charge decide “Yeah, looks like Horror is dead again. Let’s make romantic comedies for a few years until interest spikes once more”….

(3) DEALING THEMSELVES IN. We recently reported on Pokémon card thefts in Manhattan. Now “Pokemon card thefts are hitting collectors across Southern California”, too, reports the LA Times. (Behind a paywall.)

Thieves have tried to break into Taylor Minatogawa’s business five times in the last two months, distressing him so much he’s spent at least a dozen nights inside his shop keeping guard.

A hooded suspect with a baseball bat surprised one of his employees at the door of the Gardena shop during one unsuccessful attempt. In another, thieves cut their way in through the roof, making off with thousands of dollars’ worth of loot.

For all that effort, one might think the store deals in diamonds, designer brands or expensive tech. But Minatogawa doesn’t work with any of those — he deals in Pikachus, Charizards and Jigglypuffs, to name a few.

Over the last six months, trading card shop owners and serious Pokemon card collectors across Southern California have been targeted in brazen, sophisticated and sometimes violent thefts, with losses reaching into the six figures in a single heist…

… Business owners say they’ve been followed. Held at gunpoint. Pepper sprayed. Burglars have broken into their cars, tunneled into their businesses through the walls and the roof and smashed through the front.

“Right now there’s more security needed for Pokemon cards than diamonds,” said Minatogawa, owner of Buddies Collectibles. “It’s getting crazy.”

In multiple burglaries, thieves have walked right by the cash register and straight to the display cases, smashing the glass and fleeing with handfuls of valuable cards before police arrive….

(4) ANY SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED CINEMATIC TECHNOLOGY. Or in more skeptical words, “A History of Fakery on Film” at JSTOR Daily.

Bode writes that, in the earliest era of film, audiences were wowed by movies as a kind of magic trick. Part of the appeal was trying to guess how filmmaking techniques had achieved an illusion. (Answers included multiple exposures, running film backward, or simply starting and stopping the camera, as well as the use of scale models and mannequins). Popular magazines explained how dummies could be used to film scenes of a person falling from a high place or being struck by a train.

But, by the early 1910s, the film trade press was reporting that illusions for their own sake were losing their appeal, except among children or particularly unworldly adults. Filming tricks became absorbed into the project of building interesting narratives. Now, rather than making audiences curious about how they were achieved, the point was to blur the line between actors’ real feats of bravery and simulated stunts.

However, Bode writes, critics and audiences complained when the dummies looked like dummies or the lighting gave away a cut to footage shot in the studio. As one letter to a fan magazine asked, “why not better illusions? The kind we can’t figure out?”

In some cases, viewers began “figuring out” tricks that weren’t really there, dismissing actual stunts done by real actors as trickery. To counter this cynicism, action stars often turned up for interviews showing the cuts and sprained ankles that were (or that they claimed were) the result of filming exciting scenes.

Alternately, Bode writes, the industry sometimes attempted to educate audiences about the value of sophisticated filming and production techniques for creating a great movie. One 1918 article described “legitimate fakes” as shots that “look genuine and require as much care and attention to detail as would shooting a real structure.” And a 1923 fan magazine article even scolded the viewer who insisted from their “comfortable theatre chair” that actors should risk injury or death.

In general, by the 1920s, film studios just wanted the film press to pipe down about the use of tricks. And, indeed, behind-the-scenes stories about the use of glass paintings, miniatures, and other special techniques declined over time as fan magazines increasingly focused on stars….

(5) FOR YOUNG READERS. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s “Children and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels”. Lots of genre related items here, including:

The Experiment by Rebecca Stead, Andersen, £7.99

Eleven-year-old Nathan has always known that he’s from another planet, part of a long-running Earth-based experiment that seems to be coming to an end. But as Nathan’s peers start disappearing and his own family are called back to the Mothership, he begins to question everything he’s believed to be true … An imaginative, humorous coming-of-age sci-fi story for 9+ by an award-winning author.

The Monsters at the End of the World by Rebecca Orwin, illustrated by Oriol Vidal, Puffin, £8.99
Everyone knows that the monsters infesting the sea near Sunny’s tiny town are violent and terrifying – until Sunny meets one, and finds out that what everyone knows is wrong. But Seawaren’s elders won’t listen to Sunny, even though someone in the town is keeping a monstrous secret of their own. This gripping post-apocalyptic debut for 9+ emphasises empathy and curiosity as essentials even in the toughest of times.

The Night I Borrowed Time by Iqbal Hussain, Puffin, £8.99
Zubair is a seventh son, but it’s not until his granny arrives from Pakistan and gives him a strange amulet that he discovers he has the ability to time-travel. When he attempts to fix his parents’ marriage, however, Zubair finds that meddling with the past presents a lot of pitfalls in this funny, touching, thought-provoking 10+ story, richly imagined and deeply inventive.

(6) SFF REFERENCE IN BBC HISTORICAL SERIES. [Item by Steven French.] The BBC has a long-running history programme called “A House Through Time” in which the historian Professor David Olusoga ‘brings the past to life’ by delving into the histories of the inhabitants of the house in question. In the first episode of the latest series he examines the backgrounds of the residents of two houses, one on London and the other in Berlin, as they lived and worked between WWI and II. One of the residents of the Berlin building was Albert Henninger who drew illustrations for the 1931 science fiction novel F.P. 1 Doesn’t Answer by Kurt Siodmak, about a case of sabotage on a gigantic floating platform in the middle of the Atlantic used by airplanes for refueling and repairs. Henninger’s name also appears as a ’technical advisor’ in the credits of the ‘visually bold’ film based on the novel that was released the following year (with English and French versions appearing 1933). A young Peter Lorre starred in the movie.

The mention of Henninger’s involvement in the book and movie occurs at around the 29 minute mark. (Subscription required for outside UK.)

(7) HEAR ABOUT SF’S ANDERSON FAMILY. Fanac.org has posted the second part of their Zoom fanhistory video “Astrid Anderson Bear, and the Family that Built Worlds, w/ interviewer Joe Siclari (Pt 2 of 2)”.

In part 2 of this interview, we continue to explore the live and times of Astrid Anderson Bear, daughter of famed science fiction writer Poul Anderson & legendary fan Karen Anderson, wife of noted science fiction writer Greg Bear, and an admirable fan in her own right.

Astrid grew up deep in the fannish aether. In Part 2 of the interview, there are family photos, and more stories of family and friends. Here Astrid recounts anecdotes that illuminate her mother’s personality, from Karen’s  recreation of the meal in  E.R. Eddison’s “A Fish Dinner in Memison” (with Fritz Leiber as one of the guests at the table) to her professional writing and costuming innovations.

You’ll hear about the time Astrid had to get orange spray paint out of her hair,  how the “Bat and the Bitten” came about, and what happened to the yearling deer found dead by the side of the road. Astrid gives her first-hand account of the events at the St. Louiscon masquerade that led to a damaged movie screen, and the resulting Harlan Ellison controversy that ensued.  Through an intriguing Q&A session, we learn how Poul saves the world (in fiction), the origin of the Hoka tales and Poul’s friendship with Gordon Dickson, Greg’s relationship to the Science Fiction Museum, and Astrid’s own writing.

Join us and hear about Astrid’s extraordinary fannish journey.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Poul Anderson’s “A Bicycle Built for Brew” (1958)

Poul Anderson loved beer. In fact, he was the first writer to imagine a spaceship powered by beer in A Bicycle Built for Brew published in Astounding Science Fiction sixty-eight years ago.  

As a paperback release, Ace published it first in Un-Man and Other Novellas / The Makeshift Rocket in 1963. Open Road currently has it available as an ebook.

It wasn’t unusual for his characters to hoist a brew or two as I experienced when listening to some of the Nicholas Van Rijn stories recently. I’ll let the copy writer for A Bicycle Built for Brew, Volume 6 of The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson tell you about it: 

A Bicycle Built for Brew, the lead short novel mixes beer, air-tight drums, a talking parrot guaranteed to repeat phrases laced with 4-letter indignities, a romance between an English lass and a Scottish soldier, and the need to communicate the fact of the invasion to British authorities on a nearby asteroid in a very humorous tale. 

So I leave you with a short bit from it

“I see. Well, what are you having to drink?”

“Beer,” said Matheny without hesitation.

“Huh? Look, pal, this is on me.”

“The only beer on Mars comes forty million miles, with interplanetary freight charges tacked on,” said Matheny. “Tuborg!”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ACCORDION IS BETTER THAN KRYPTONITE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Batman and Superman make a cameo appearance with Weird Al Yankovic on this Worlds Finest #50 variant cover.

(11) MAHJONG. NPR explores “Why a century-old tile game is suddenly drawing younger players”.

… It’s a weekend afternoon, and the room is packed.

GANN: I shall be taking you through the beautiful world of mahjong today.

MCCAMMON: We’re at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and Jon Gann is greeting a few dozen people of a wide range of ages who’ve crammed themselves around game tables for an afternoon of mahjong. Gann shepherds the newcomers, the folks gathered around the clearly labeled beginners table, through the basics of how to line up the tiles and look for patterns.

GANN: We have bamboos, or bams. We have cracks, or characters. And we have dots, or circles.

MCCAMMON: Gann says he’s been seeing a surge of interest in the Chinese tile game. Roommates Grace Folk (ph) and Sophia Rosso (ph) say they just had their first lesson right here the week before.

GRACE FOLK: We’re trying to find hobbies that are – get us out of the house and are not expensive, like eating out or shopping, that kind of thing.

SOPHIA ROSSO: Getting off of our phones and doing real-life things…

(12) COLLISIONS IN THE FOMALHAUT SYSTEM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The nearby bright star Fomalhaut, 25 light years away is orbited by a ring of dust. High-contrast imaging of the system has shown an expanding cloud of dust, now thought to be the debris from a collision between two asteroids. Kalas et al. have obtained additional high-contrast imaging two decades after the dust cloud appeared. They identified a second transient source in the Fomalhaut system, which they interpret as another dust cloud from a second collision. They used the timing, motion, and brightness of both dust clouds to investigate the collisional dynamics and dust production rate in the Fomalhaut system.

Primary research here.   

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Disney+ Shares ‘Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord’ Teaser Trailer, Premiere Date” reports Animation World Network.

Lucasfilm Animation has dropped a teaser trailer, lots of images, and key art – all shown below – for its upcoming animated series, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, which will premiere April 6 on Disney+. Two episodes will debut each week, with the final two airing on May 4.

Set after the events of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the adventure finds Maul plotting to rebuild his criminal syndicate on a planet untouched by the Empire. There, he crosses paths with a disillusioned young Jedi Padawan who could be his apprentice….

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Daniel Dern, 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 Lis Carey.]

Pixel Scroll 1/3/26 Rotating PixelScrolls And The Possibility Of Global File Violation

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(1) BEGIN BY DISCUSSING INTELLIGENCE. Joe Stech at Compelling Science Fiction contends “Intelligence Is a Landscape, Not a Ladder”.

Over the holidays, many friends and family members asked me how I think about AI, given my background in science fiction and tech. The question usually boils down to: “when will AI be as smart as a human?” But I kept having to back up before I could answer, because the question itself contains a misconception.

The common mental model goes something like this: intelligence is a single dimension, a line from “dumb” to “smart.” Rocks are at the bottom, insects are a bit higher, dogs are higher still, humans are at the top, and somewhere above us lurks the specter of superintelligent AI. This model is so deeply embedded in our thinking that we rarely question it. We ask “how intelligent is this?” as if it were a meaningful question with a single answer.

But here’s a better way to think about it: intelligence isn’t a ladder leading up to some AGI peak. It’s a landscape, a vast terrain with countless dimensions, and there’s no summit….

Some examples

A honeybee has a brain with about a million neurons, whereas humans have on the order of a hundred billion. By the linear model, it should be barely intelligent at all. But bees can navigate using the sun’s position, communicate the location of food sources through elaborate dances, recognize human faces, and perform basic arithmetic. They occupy a point on the surface that’s extremely high in certain dimensions (spatial navigation, efficient foraging optimization) and essentially zero in others (abstract reasoning, language).

An octopus is a genuinely alien intelligence. It can solve puzzles, use tools, remember individual humans, and escape from supposedly secure tanks with Houdini-like skills. But two-thirds of its neurons are in its arms, which can act semi-autonomously. It’s not “smarter” or “dumber” than a crow or a dog. It’s intelligent in a completely different shape….

Where do LLMs fit?

Large language models are simply another cluster of points on this surface. They’re remarkably high in some dimensions: language fluency (albeit with only tenuous world models), broad but spotty knowledge retrieval, pattern recognition across text, certain types of reasoning. They’re essentially zero in others: they have no persistent memory across conversations, no embodiment, no sensory experience, no continuous learning ability….

(2) WHAT’S GONE BEFORE. Brian Keene isn’t advocating a canon in “Required Reading (Daily Journal 1/2/26)”, he’s urging ambitious writers to become knowledgeable about their field. And for horror writers he recommends a specific book to help that happen.

…So many now-aspiring writers don’t seem to understand how vitally essential reading is to becoming a writer. I wouldn’t be a member of SFWA if you paid me to be (an organization who’s history is even more checkered than HWA) but I do have friends in the science-fiction and fantasy fields, and they tell me of new writers who’ve never read Tolkien, but simply watched the Peter Jackson films, and have never read Frank Herbert, Asimov, Heinlein, Dick, or others — opting instead for film and television adaptations. If they read at all, it’s just the equally uninformed work of their peers, and thus you have a generation with zero knowledge of the history of their chosen genre or what has come before, simply regurgitating and copying each other’s work like some sort of collective biological generative artificial intelligence.

We see some of that in horror, of course, but I would argue that it is not as nearly widespread or pronounced in our genre as it seems to be in science fiction and fantasy. …

…We are still lucky enough to have folks like Mark Seiber, Ron Clinton, Stefan Dziemianowicz, David J. Schow, Ellen Datlow, s.j. bagley (sic), Stephen Mark Rainey, John Maclay, and others, but those folks are my age or older, and a new generation of horror writers and horror readers doesn’t know to look to them for recommendations. Instead, social media is full of self-appointed arbitrators who, by their own admission, haven’t read anything in the genre published pre-2010 and whose recommendations are based more on what looks good on Instagram or TikTok rather than what’s good to read or was influential or impacted the genre for ______ reason.

The one resource book I’d love to stick in the hands of every Millennial or Zoomer now interested in the genre would be Jason Cavallaro’s Cracking Spines: Three Decades of Horror, which is just as thorough and exhaustive as Sean Howe’s history of Marvel Comics that I mentioned above. Jason’s book is written from the perspective of a fan and a reader, and is probably the very best recommended reading list for horror fiction published over the last thirty years. You can get it in paperback, hardcover, and eBook here. …

(3) ANOTHER BIT OF HISTORY. Lisa Morton shares her “Thoughts on a full rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer” at Every Day Is Halloween.

…Now, here we are nearly thirty years later, and Buffy is about to get a reboot. My man Ricky (also a Buffy fan, with a serious crush on Willow) and I decided to give the entire series a fresh viewing. I was curious about how I’d react. Would I still love Season Three in particular? Was Season Seven as awful as I remembered? Would Dawn still irritate the f&*k out of me?

The answers to those questions are: Yes; pretty much; and yeah, but not as much as a certain other character.

Here’s my overall take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the vantage of someone living in 2025, the era of expensive series, when a season is eight episodes, not more than twenty…

(4) MMPB NOT QUITE EXTINCT HERE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Baen’s Toni Weisskopf said this about the future of their mass market pbs:

The format has, as long predicted, finally been overtaken in the market in the “cheaper/convenient” slot by ebooks. We will continue to publish some books in mass market size, but most likely only after a trip through the still popular trade pb size. If the market changes again, we will, as always, adapt to that in due course.

(Quote forwarded with permission.)

(5) ARISIA SF CONVENTION WILL TAKE ‘GAP YEAR’ IN 2027. On December 12th, the Arisia Corporation announced that “the membership voted [on 12/9] to take a gap year from holding the convention for 2027, with plans to return in 2028.” You can read the full announcement on Facebook, including details on what will happen during that gap year.

At the Arisia corporate meeting on December 9th, the membership voted to take a gap year from holding the convention for 2027, with plans to return in 2028. Here is the text of the resolution:

“Resolved: That we act and plan to hold the next Arisia convention after 2026 in 2028, by surveying the community during Arisia 2026, by executing on some of the long term infrastructure needs of Arisia 2028, and by including the community in regular communications and updates, and possibly smaller events between now and then.The Eboard will survey the Arisia 2026 community using multiple methods, including but not limited to panels and/or a formal survey.The Board will then turn the survey results to a Hiatus Committee comprised of volunteers from the board, corporate and convention attendees.The Hiatus Committee will report out scope and pillars within the first 3 months, and identify 6 and 9 month goals. Additional committees may be added by the Corporation.”

Note that there will be opportunities at the 2026 convention to learn more and engage in the process.

(6) MIRANDA OTTO Q&A. In the Guardian profile “Miranda Otto: ‘It can be a gift when things go absolutely the wrong way’” the actress answers some ‘chaotic’ readers’ questions including:

What’s been your most memorable interaction with a fan?

It’s not just one particular interaction [but] when I meet fans of Lord of the Rings, particularly women, I hear a lot of stories about what Eowyn meant to them when they were growing up … things that had happened in their lives and how much that character meant to them and was some kind of help to them in those times.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 3, 1892 — J.R.R. Tolkien. (Died 1975.)

By Paul Weimer: Can it really be that I, Paul, have never done a birthday piece on Tolkien? Surely that can’t be so.  I think I’ve recounted the story of my encounter with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, reading them furiously in preparation for seeing the animated movies. So let’s take that as read and continue on and speak more generally about it.

I have mentioned in my piece on Asimov that he was one of my formative and abiding SF authors to read.  In the same way, Tolkien was that for me, for fantasy. And so my lens of fantasy for many years had the poles of Roger Zelazny…and J.R.R. Tolkien. Epic fantasy, then and since, has had Tolkien as my yardstick and as my model.  

I’ve read The Lord of the Rings many times, The Hobbit less so…although I did puzzle through Hobbitus Ille: The Latin Hobbit and found the word choices and style interesting, and worked much better for Tolkien than I anticipated. I do wish someone might tackle The Lord of the Rings but I suspect the Tolkien estate would not see the value-add, plus the work involved would be immense. 

But Tolkien taught me to love languages. I am indifferent in being able to learn languages, but my love of having bits of other languages and more than bits is from my reading of Tolkien.  A number of things, characters and other bits in my RPGs are taken from construction formations of worlds first learned at Tolkien’s knee, as it were. 

I’ve always liked maps. I have a thing for cartography.  But gas station maps and atlases were not enough, and when I saw the maps in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, a love of fictional maps of fantasy cartography really took hold. Even today, in my mind, a fantasy novel is almost always better with a map.  Sure, there are novels (hello West Passage) where the geography is deliberately obfuscating so that a map is impossible. And I know there is a strata of fantasy authors who despise, detest and put down maps in fantasy. But Tolkien’s maps firmly set my love of fantasy maps forever.  The irony is, I have strong concerns about Tolkien’s physiogeography as shown in the maps themselves. Even given the cataclysmic events of the novels, some of it just doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t keep me from loving the use, form and style of those maps, all the same. And I recall a MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing Game) supplement that seriously tried to make logical real-world sense of Middle-Earth, complete with climatological extrapolations.

Tolkien helped form and inform my roleplaying and Gaming, with a Sauronic dark lord in my first ever fantasy D&D world. The potential heroic nature of people like Aragorn, Boromir…and yes Merry, Pippin and Sam is something that I am just one of millions of readers to learn. 

And viewers. I mentioned the animated movies, and frankly, expected those to be the only real versions I’d ever see. I, and my late friend and Tolkien fanatic friend Scott were over the moon when the movies were announced. We endlessly debated them, original versus extended, movies vs books, bits from Tolkien’s letters and other marginalia (which is a reading project for years more of work). 

But back to those letters, I have been delighted to see new versions and repackaging of some of those stories and ideas into new volumes. I think it’s a valuable thing to show that Tolkien was more than just The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and while some of this work is the iceberg of the series (just as The Simarillion is), there is an endless wealth of story detail and ideas to be had here. There has been no world quite like Middle-Earth, before and perhaps since. The letters and pieces are sometimes contradictory, changing, evolving and showing that right until his death, Tolkien was forever working on Middle-Earth. 

So, when I picked up HARN, the roleplaying game, I was not surprised to find Elves and Dwarves, right out of Tolkien, in it. I was even more surprised, and I don’t think it would “fly” today, that in what would we now would call a multiverse supplement that a version of Middle-Earth is in the multiverse near Harn, and the module speculates that Tolkien either visited it or met someone who had done so. (Our native Earth is also nearby to Harn in the multiverse). 

Reading and thinking about Tolkien has led me down many paths.  It also led me eventually to the work of many other authors. I will just name one here: Guy Gavriel Kay. Why Kay? Well, I had read somewhere that he had helped edit The Silmarillion and that the Fionavar Tapestry was heavily influenced by that. So Tolkien definitely led to my lifelong reading of a different master of the craft (among many other authors) as well as my lifelong fascination with his own work. 

Happy birthday.

J.R.R. Tolkien

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

A Hobbit Breakfast of the Finest Kind

Now we are all here!” said Gandalf, looking at the row of thirteen hoods—the best detachable party hoods—and his own hat hanging on the pegs. “Quite a merry gathering! I hope there is something left for the late-comers to eat and drink! What’s that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think for me.”
“And for me,” said Thorin.
“And raspberry jam and apple-tart,” said Bifur.
“And mince-pies and cheese,” said Bofur.
“And pork-pie and salad,” said Bombur.
“And more cakes—and ale—and coffee, if you don’t mind,” called the other dwarves through the door.
“Put on a few eggs, there’s a good fellow!” Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. “And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!”
“Seems to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself!”

 — J.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit

Our author tells us that Hobbits are fond of six meals a day, including two dinners, if they can get it, while in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, he notes, they “eat, and drink, often and heartily, and growing food and eating it occupied most of their time.”

These meals are Breakfast at 7 a.m., Second Breakfast  at 9 a.m., Elevenses at 11 a.m., Luncheon at 1 p.m., Afternoon Tea at 3 p.m., Dinner at 6 p.m., and finally Supper at 9 p.m.

Jackson’s The Fellowship of The Ring film for no reason whatsoever mentions that second breakfast exists, saying that hobbits eat seven meals throughout each day. Why they did this is unknown. Another example of Jackson messing with Tolkien’s writings for no damn good reason. Writings that I think are quite perfect as they are, thank you. 

Devoted fans of the books have recreated these meals included the elevenses. (I’m more devoted to The Hobbit than I am to the Trilogy; I read The Hobbit at least a dozen times down the years and will now listen to it at least every few years as it’s comforting. ) One site had this for its menu — Elven lembas bread, Bread pudding with cinnamon, Lavender and lemon muffins, Strawberry shortcake with cream, caraway seed cake and lemon tea cake. And lots of tea with heavy cream of course. Total fiction, of course but it’s comforting for them to make up a menu like that?

As Thorin said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But, sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell.”  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Heath Row tells the world in The Wahflestomper Manifesto:

The year 2026 shall be my year as a veryactive (vs. hyperactive or overactive) letterhack. If I succeed with this experiment, I shall be a superactive letterhack. Rather than publish apazines, a genzine, or a perzine, I shall write letters of comment to other fanzines, zines, magazines, comic books, authors, media producers, and people with whom I want to correspond—or to whom I have something to say….

…Each letter I send might be considered an issue of Wahflestomper. Letters I write but do not send definitely shall not be considered issues of Wahflestomper. Each issue of Wahflestomper shall be titled and numbered sequentially when sent. Letters that are not titled or numbered as an issue of Wahflestomper shall remain mere letters. Wahflestomper as a whole shall be considered a distributed correspondenzine….

A copy of the Manifesto is included in The Stf Amateur 27 at eFanzines.

(11) THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE THESE HOMES. [Item by Steven French.] This is an oldie but goodie: “A Map of the Last Remaining Flying Saucer Homes” at Atlas Obscura.

THE FUTURO HOUSE, IN ALL its space age retro splendor, is like a physical manifestation of 1960s optimism. Shaped like the Hollywood idea of a flying saucer, the Futuro is a plastic, prefabricated, portable vacation home built to easily adapt to any climate or terrain, from mountain slopes to the seaside. After enjoying a heyday in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the remaining Futuros are now scattered across all parts of the globe, from the Australian beaches to the mountains of Russia, like secluded relics of midcentury technoutopianism….

(12) A MUSICAL COUP FOR STRANGER THINGS. Variety explains “How Stranger Things Finale Landed Prince’s When Doves Cry, Purple Rain”.

Securing the rights to use a song in film or TV is a challenging and expensive task — and the more iconic the song, the more challenging and expensive the clearance is likely to be.

So when two of Prince’s most legendary songs, “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain,” appeared in the finale of “Stranger Things,” it was obvious that therein lay a tale. And the tale is even more complicated than virtually anyone would have thought….

Nora Felder, president of Picture Music Company and a veteran music supervisor who has been on board for the entirety of Stranger Things, answered Variety’s questions.

…Those two Prince songs were a surprise, and I’m sure it was a challenge clearing them. Why those songs? And how do you think they spoke to those moments in the show?

I’m glad you say “do you think” because songs can be interpreted in so many different ways. But they came about in a similar way to Kate Bush and “Running Up That Hill”: They were not scripted. They were “TBD” moments in the two spots in the script where a song needed to play…

…Now, I know the Duffers feel that Prince’s estate cleared the songs because of Kate Bush, and I’m sure that had something to do with it, as the parties reminded them of the impact the show had with “Running Up That Hill.” And I did tell them I thought this was going to be one of the most significant moments in the season, although no one has a crystall ball. But still, for the rights owners, it’s not just about the money, it’s about what lines up with what Prince would have wanted, and to do it in the most respectful manner possible. As we do with the trickier clearances, I do believe the hard work we put into the “theses” made sure everyone fully understood these uses and what they meant to the characters….

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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).]

Pixel Scroll 10/23/25 It’s True. This Fan Has No Pixel

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(1) WORTH WAITING FOR. Here’s something I never expected to find online. Well done, Fanac.org! Issues #2 and #3 of “Uncle Albert’s Electric Talking Fanzine” – which originated in 1981 on cassette tape. This pair features Larry Tucker, Tom Barber, Randy Bathurst, Joe Haldeman, Ted Reynolds, Joni Stopa, Dave Locke and Leah Zeldes.

(Why do I sound surprised? Well, File 770 last reported on efforts to preserve Uncle Albert’s in 2013.)

Larry Tucker as Uncle Albert from the ConFusion 14 (1977) program book.

(2) IN PUBLISHING TIMES TO COME. Silvia Moreno-Garcia doesn’t think the current book sales slump is a reaction against Amazon: “Boycott? Not likely” – an open post at Patreon. As for the future?

…When you talk to agents and editors right now the word on the street is that romantasy is hot. My own publisher is Del Rey. I looked at their acquisitions for 2025. Yep, they have been heavily investing in romantasy. The same can be said of other rival publishers.

I believe that this can easily create a potato famine scenario where publishers over acquire and then can’t sell books. This would not be good.

Predicting the future is difficult, but if you asked me what else is coming, then I would say it’s more reskinned fanfic of popular properties like Harry Potter, more self-published writers with a proven track record being acquired by traditional publishers, and hard times for writers of color.

Look, I don’t want to be alarmist, but things are not looking swell for marginalized writers. We saw a wave of support for Black writers in 2020 which now seems to have died off. Similarly, Latino writers who were eagerly acquired between 2020 and 2022 have now debuted or released books to little fanfare.

No book is assured sales. But part of the downward spiral is the fault of publishers themselves. For example, in 2020 major publishers like Macmillan committed to substantially increasing Latin American representation, from authors to staff, at their companies. Nothing came of this.

I said when it rains it pours, and this remains true. The current focus on nostalgia is not going to help writers of color, who are already underrepresented in the industry. Diversity campaigns and large marketing budgets for BIPOC seem to have evaporated. Plus, people seem to be cutting back on books. Right now, most publishing companies are going to go into safe mode. That’s why nostalgia is so sexy.

Softer sales are bad news for all authors, but marginalized ones are likely to bear the worst of a slump….

(3) HORROR SQUEEZE COMING? Meanwhile, Brian Keene admits to being “Half-Wrong, Half-Right” – indie horror is still in trouble, and he thinks a major market contraction is still coming even though horror is more popular than ever right now.

“I’ve learned a lot from Mary SanGiovanni. Like, for example, that Brian Keene can occasionally be wrong about something.”

— Hailey Piper

This was my favorite quote from last month’s Scares That Cares’ Killer Pride event. Hailey was talking about my insistence a year ago that Horror Fiction is about to go through another downturn and market contraction. And I get why Hailey disagrees with me, because the objective fact is that Horror Fiction — throughout world history — has never been more popular than it is now. The genre’s abundance and accessibility dwarfs the gothic era, the post World War and pulp eras, the Seventies surge, the reign of King and Koontz, the 1980s, or my generation’s own Millennium emergence. There are more publishers and authors doing Horror Fiction than at any time in history, and thus, there is more Horror Fiction available than at any time in history.

But I still think there’s a downturn and market correction coming….

(4) THEIR MILEAGE MAY VARY. In the previous item Keene goes into detail about how his Pennsylvania store Vortex Books in being forced out of its storefront to go entirely online. And yet Publishers Weekly quotes owners of several newly opened indie horror specialty bookstores as having a very positive experience: “Booksellers Ride the Horror Wave”.

While many indie bookstores are bulking up on horror, several entrepreneurs are taking it a step further by opening stores exclusively dedicated to scary reads. These new booksellers are looking to take advantage of a 7% uptick in sales in the genre through the first nine months of 2025, compared to the same period last year, according to Circana BookScan.

“Horror,” says Michaela Granger, who opened Midslumber Media in Portland, Ore. in March, “has always been popular in books and movies across the board.” But she thinks the genre is surging now because of “the state the world”: “Horror has always been deeply political; it’s the place where heavy conversations can be had. Horror is intense.”

Granger became a bookseller because none of Portland’s indies are dedicated to horror. After she came upon a 700-square-foot space that was “too perfect to pass up,” she started selling new and used books, including classic and gothic horror, as well as movies.

(5) MARKED FOR LIFE. “What is the scariest book? 10 horror authors pick the most terrifying stories ever” for USA Today. Here are two of the authors and their choices.

Joe Hill doesn’t have to go very far to find the scariest book ever. Just up a rung on his family tree.

The bestselling horror author of “King Sorrow” knows he’s biased, but the “correct answer” is still “It” by Hill’s father, Stephen King.

“That’s the gold standard when it comes to scaring the pants off people. No one’s ever going to touch that,” Hill says. “The classics – ‘Dracula,’ ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘Dr. Jekyll and ‘Mr. Hyde’ – I love those books but they were written in a more conservative time. People didn’t go for the throat the way my dad went for the throat in ‘It.’ “…

Later on the list is —

‘Let’s Get Invisible!’ by R.L. Stine

[Chosen by Kristen Loesch, the author of “The Hong Kong Widow.”]

“R.L. Stine’s ‘Let’s Get Invisible!’ is about a kid who finds a mirror in his attic that can turn you invisible. It’s one of the original ‘Goosebumps’; I first read it at age 9. I reread it last year, thinking it couldn’t be as terrifying as I remembered. Ha! It was somehow even scarier … and by now I am a seasoned horror reader and not easily spooked. What is it about this story that won’t let me go?”

(6) ABOUT THAT HARRY POTTER INK. “Laser Clinic Offers Discount on Harry Potter Tattoo Removals in Support of Trans Rights” reports Gayety.

A laser clinic in Manchester is making headlines after offering a special promotion aimed at helping fans move on from their Harry Potter-themed tattoos, and making a bold statement in support of trans rights.

Manchester Laser NQ, located inside The Old Volt tattoo studio on Swan Street, announced on Instagram that it is offering 50 percent off the cost of removing Harry Potter tattoos. The promotion comes in direct response to author J.K. Rowling’s controversial and widely criticized views on the transgender community….

…Rowling, 60, first sparked controversy in 2019 when she publicly supported Maya Forstater, a U.K. tax researcher who lost (and later regained) her job after expressing “gender-critical” views. Since then, Rowling has doubled down on rhetoric many view as harmful to trans people, often equating advocacy for transgender rights with threats to women’s rights.

While the author has maintained that she supports trans individuals and opposes discrimination, her repeated comments have ignited backlash from LGBTQ+ activists, fans, and even actors from the Harry Potter films. Yet, many celebrities, including actress Keira Knightley, who recently voiced interest in the franchise, have been criticized for failing to distance themselves from Rowling’s statements.

The promotion from Manchester Laser NQ reflects the deep disillusionment many queer fans feel toward the brand.

“Around 16 percent of people regret getting a tattoo, less than one percent of people regret gender-affirming surgery, and 100 percent of queer people regret their Harry Potter tattoos,” the clinic joked in their caption, adding a disclaimer: “(Last stat not fact-checked).”…

(7) COURT RULES AGAINST TEXAS BOOK RATINGS LAW. “Federal Judge Orders Permanent Injunction Against Texas Book Ratings Law” – Publishers Weekly analyzes the verdict.

After two years of litigation over Texas House Bill 900, a federal judge has granted summary judgment and ordered a permanent injunction to block the mandatory book ratings law. In his October 21 decision, Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin division, wrote that HB 900 “compels speech, is void for vagueness, and is an unconstitutional prior restraint” and that “Plaintiffs’ First and Fourteenth Amendment claims are all successful.”…

…The statement represents Valerie Koehler, owner of Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop; Gregory Day, interim general manager of Austin’s BookPeople; American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill; Association of American Publishers president and CEO Maria Pallante; Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger; and Comic Book Legal Defense Fund interim director Jeff Trexler. They were supported during litigation with amicus briefs filed by the American Association of School Librarians, the Association of University Presses, Barnes & Noble the Educational Book and Media Association, Freedom to Learn Advocates, and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

The plaintiffs filed their complaint in July 2023, after HB 900 was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Titled the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act, or READER, HB 900 was designed to regulate access to “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant” materials in public school libraries. Under HB 900, the Texas State Library and Archives, chaired by original defendant Martha Wong, would establish content standards; the Texas Education Agency would oversee the standards; and school vendors including bookstores would be required to comply with the rating system by categorizing all their materials….

(8) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 29 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Why Not Say What Happened? is about “What Steve Ditko’s Family Wants You to Know”. (In addition to the direct link, here’s where it can be found on several dozen platforms.) [Click for larger image below.]

I grow a bit verklempt this time around while I rap about the Spider-Man rock album for which I made sure the band didn’t miss a note, remember watching Dave Cockrum and Len Wein create Giant-Size X-Men #1 out of thin air, pass along the surprising truths Steve Ditko’s family most wants you to know, critique the Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, choke up while praising Marie Severin’s posthumous induction into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, walk the exhibit hall at Baltimore Comic-Con where only a single item of comics memorabilia tempted me, and more.

Marie Severin’s F.O.O.M. map of Marvel — with Scott Edelman circled in red.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) HOW TO FIND GAMES. [Item by Steven French.] Keith Stuart extols the virtues of flawed-but-fascinating games in this week’s “Pushing Buttons” newsletter in the Guardian: “Average-but-arresting games used to be the backbone of the industry. What price perfection?”

… The game is also a reminder that flawed-but-fascinating games were once the backbone of the industry. From the mid-1990s to the late 2010s, it was possible for a team of fewer than 50 development staff to create an OK mid-budget adventure, get it published globally and find an audience. I know this because I reviewed dozens of them, from wannabe 2.5D platformer Pandemonium!, to riot simulator State of Emergency, to horror shooter The Suffering. The PlayStation 2 housed hundreds, thanks to its vast popularity. For every Gran Turismo or Metal Gear Solid there was a Enthusia Professional Racing or Kill Switch, or a Toca Race Driver 3 or an Oni….

…For many years the phrase “classic 7/10” was a joke among games journalists as the score became a convenient go-to when a game defied easy critical evaluation. But that seven has often hidden interesting treasures that players would often discover for themselves by playing magazine cover disc demos or renting it from Blockbuster. Those avenues aren’t open any more, so you must use Steam demos and YouTube videos to root out the slightly bruised truffles of the games industry. It’s worth the effort…

(11) NOT THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN. “Catan Movies and TV Series in the Works at Netflix” reports Variety.

Netflix has traded some serious resources to secure the global rights to “Catan.”

The streaming giant is now developing projects based on the beloved board game across film and both scripted and unscripted TV, as well as both live-action and animation. All projects will be produced by Darren Kyman from game publisher asmodee, Pete Fenlon of Catan Studios (an asmodee studio), and Guido and Benjamin Teuber, the sons of ‘Catan’ inventor Klaus Teuber. Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment will also produce….

… Klaus Teuber originally released “Catan” in 1995 under the name “The Settlers of Catan.” Since then, the game has become a phenomenon, selling over 45 million copies worldwide and having been translated into over 40 languages. In the game, players reach the fictional island of Catan, where they must acquire resources and grow their settlements, ultimately acquiring victory points in order to win….

Netflix is developing or has already released a number of projects based on both video and board games. The streamer previously aired the acclaimed animated series “Arcane,” which was based on “League of Legends,” as well as an animated adapation of “Castlevania.” Most recently, Netflix announced it had ordered a series version of “Assassin’s Creed” and a “Monopoly” reality competition series.…

(12) THE MAGIC FLUTE. [Item by Jim Janney.] I have seen more refined performances of this, but never one with so much joy. “Huw Montague Rendall & Elisabeth Boudreault sing ‘Pa-Pa-Pa-Papagena’ (Mozart: Die Zauberflöte)”.

(13) JUSTWATCH HALLOWEEN STREAMING REPORT. As Halloween approaches, U.S. audiences are turning to streaming platforms for their favorite thrills. Based on JustWatch streaming charts from October 1–13, 2025, horror and suspense titles have surged in popularity — with The Substance and The Last of Us emerging as this year’s most in-demand titles.

Key Insights

  • The resurgence of early-2000s horror is notable this year, with 28 Days Later re-entering the top three, over two decades since its release.
  • Titles blending psychological horror thrillers (The Substance, Longlegs) outperformed traditional slasher-style films.
  • The Last of Us continues to blur the line between prestige drama and horror — capturing both genre fans and mainstream audiences.
  • Cross-platform viewing is on the rise: more than half of the top 10 movies and shows are available across two or more streaming services, showing the fragmentation of horror consumption in 2025.

The Substance and The Last of Us Lead the Pack

  • The Substance, the body horror hit starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, claimed the #1 spot among movies, followed by the possession thriller Talk to Me and the apocalyptic classic 28 Days Later.
  • Among TV shows, HBO’s The Last of Us continues to dominate streaming interest well into its second year, followed by From and Stranger Things, both proving that psychological and supernatural horror still reign supreme during spooky season.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/14/25 Pixels, Like Tribbles, Are Comforting

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(1) FRAZETTA ART SETS AUCTION RECORD. [Item by Arnie Fenner.]  Frazetta’s 1967 paperback cover for Conan achieved a new auction record for fantasy art, $13,500,000. I wrote about it (and some Frazetta history) on Muddy Colors: “Conan At Auction”.

…[On] Friday, September 12, 2025, Frank Frazetta’s iconic cover for the collection Conan, published by Lancer Books in 1967, [went] on the block at Heritage Auctions.

Frank was paid something around $400 to do the art, one of 9 classic Conan oil paintings he produced for Lancer’s 12-book Conan series; 8 were published in the United States, but Lancer went bankrupt and out of business before the ninth, Conan of Aquilonia, could be distributed (though printed samples are known to exist). Sphere Books, the British licensor, published the art for their edition from a transparency they’d been provided, but Frazetta’s original was stolen while Lancer was closing its New York office and it hasn’t been seen since 1973….

And here’s what Sara Frazetta posted:

DALLAS, Heritage Auctions — Frank Frazetta breaks personal record with $13.5 million dollar painting sale for “Conan Man Ape”

My grandfather was all about breaking records. He thrived on competition and always believed he’d rise to the very top. While Norman Rockwell still holds the record for the highest price ever achieved for an illustration painting—$46 million for “Saying Grace”–this result shows that Frazetta is firmly in that league now, and that alone would have filled him with pride. He would be the first to say there’s still a little ways to go before claiming the number one spot, but he always knew he belonged there. To see his work recognized on this level, standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest of all time, is both surreal and deeply gratifying for our family.

I was so honored to help exhibit this original artwork at the Frazetta Museum in Florida, and I have a good feeling it will be on display again in the future. I look forward to curating more exhibits, not only with pieces my mom has bought back into her collection, but also through collaborations with other collectors who share in the passion for preserving this legacy. None of this would be possible without the incredible partnership we’ve had with Heritage. Their dedication has helped us achieve historic milestones like this one, while also ensuring that new generations continue to discover and celebrate my grandfather’s art.

—Sara Frazetta, frazettagirls.com

A second painting, “Queen Kong” which was published as the cover for Eerie #81 in 1977, sold for $1,093,750.

…In the meantime, Frank and Ellie’s granddaughter, Sara, has posted an enlightening and thoroughly entertaining video about the history of selling and collecting Frazetta art and shares her grandmother’s plans for the artwork. Have a look.

(2) KEENE TO MOVE BOOKSTORE SOLELY ONLINE. But for those not selling Frazetta originals, the economy is tough. Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni have announced they will transition Vortex Books & Comics to an online-only business next year. “Letters From the Labyrinth 440 – by Brian Keene”. (See Teresa Peschel’s account of her January 2025 visit “A Visit to Vortex Books and Comics in Columbia, PA”.)

Mary and I opened Vortex Books & Comics in February of 2024. That first year was amazing, business-wise, with income from multiple sources — local foot traffic, out-of-town visitors, and online sales. But beginning around February of 2025, we have seen a consistent, slow decline in those first two things. While online sales reman robust, in-store traffic has weakened with each passing month. We are not the only store experiencing this. Every other retail store owner along our street — from the pawn shop to the vintage clothing store — has seen a consistent and steady decrease in foot traffic month-after-month. My closest barometer, a vintage toy store who opened the same week we did in 2024, and with whom we have always shared a customer base, are going through it as well.

Why is that happening? Well, the reasons are many, varied, and up for discussion. Merchants I have spoken with, regardless of their political or social makeup, agree on a few objective absolutes.

First, the American economy is a tire fire right now. It doesn’t matter what the analysts or the bankers or the investors or the government data says. Here, in small town America, the price of groceries and gas and many other things has gone consistently up with each passing month, and in tandem with those increases, people have less and less money to spend on other items. A weekly local customer who was perhaps sending $100 a week at my store in 2024 dropped down to perhaps $75 by March, and then $50 by June, and is now down below $25 or perhaps has stopped buying books and comics altogether. And those out-of-towners that we had all throughout last year? The folks from Taiwan, Australia, Germany, and Canada, as well as US states like New York, California, Texas, and Florida who came here specifically to visit the store? They’ve cut back on traveling, either because they can’t afford it or they have misgivings about traveling to the US currently.

Secondly — and this is a localized issue rather than a national — we have a borough council that is inept, a mayor who suffers from terminal incompetence, and law enforcement who are either disengaged to the point they resemble Robin Williams’s stand-up bit about the traffic cop on Prozac, or filling their hours until they can get hired by ICE. Add to that the fact that parking is a maddening exercise in futility for both our customers and the merchants along the street, and a shining example of the complete and utter stupidity and disaffected benign cruelty that comes with the worst of bureaucracy. We also have a homeless problem that is increasing by the month, with no help in sight, aided and abetted by absentee landlords, abandoned buildings, and that same disengaged law enforcement. Crime is on the rise, and we don’t need the National Guard to come in and grandstand. We just need people in charge who actually care about something other than their next electoral race or the whims of their biggest donors. If you think national politics are bad, then my friend, let me introduce you to local level politics and punditry.

These are the issues all of us face, but specific to Vortex, this past summer’s Pokémon and Magic the Gathering shortage, the sharp decline in quality and demand for Marvel comics, and the absolute mountain of malfeasance that was the Diamond Distribution bankruptcy (exhaustively covered at length by Bleeding Cool and Comics Beat) certainly didn’t help us.

What has kept Vortex alive has been big events like the launch for THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: NEW TALES OF STEPHEN KING’S THE STAND, and signings with folks like Clay McLeod Chapman, Owen King, and others. But you can’t have a big event every single day, of course, and the days in between those events are in steady slow decline.

As I said, our online sales, via both our online store and our eBay auctions, continue to do well. But I don’t like the direction our physical sales are sending our profit margins. Furthermore, I see no immediate relief in sight. The true cost of the tariffs hasn’t even hit America yet, and I see no end to the social and political strife that also — whether you realize it or not — impacts the economy.

So, Mary and I have decided that early next year (2026) Vortex will transition to an online-only store. We will be greatly expanding our online inventory, and focus solely on online sales. That way, we can eliminate the cost of rent, utilities, and other overhead, and better weather this country’s economic misfortunes and social uncertainty, until things improve.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it is the right decision for us both, and for our business. Hopefully you can dig that….

(3) FELKER-MARTIN Q&A. “Horror ‘It Girl’ Gretchen Felker-Martin on DC pulling Red Hood after Charlie Kirk comments: ‘I had no regrets’” reports The Comics Journal.

On June 16, DC Comics announced that writer Gretchen Felker-Martin, an author of horror fiction including 2022’s Manhunt and one of the more well-known transgender writers in the genre, would be helming a new Red Hood ongoing series, alongside artist Jeff Spokes. On Sept. 10, one day after the first issue of Red Hood reached stands, the book was abruptly cancelled. In a statement released to retailers and initially obtained by Popverse, DC said simply, “”DC Comics cancels existing orders for Red Hood #2 and Red Hood #3, and any orders for future issues of the series. DC Comics will credit retailers for all invoiced copies of Red Hood #1, inclusive of copies that may have already been sold.”

The cancellation came on the same day that Felker-Martin had been temporarily suspended from her social media account on Bluesky for comments she made about the murder of right-wing activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk….

…A spokesperson for DC comics confirmed that a call did take place with Felker-Martin at that time [three weeks before Kirk was killed], and that the general nature of the conversation was to ask that Felker-Martin be mindful of the tone and intended audience of her social media posts.

“I think I did a fairly good job of it,” Felker-Martin said, until Charlie Kirk’s murder on Sept. 10. At that point, only a day after Red Hood’s first issue had reached comic shops, her social media presence returned to previous form. Even in hindsight, however, Felker-Martin stands by her comments.

 “It just didn’t strike me as an especially hot flashpoint,” she said. “This is such a loathsome person. Everyone on the entire internet is talking about how pleasant it is that he got his. … I saw that he had died in the middle of spreading more of the bigotry that he spent his every waking moment promulgating, and in a way that he had advocated for others to die, and felt nothing but contempt for his life. I mean, this is a man who I’ve watched for years go on television and on enormous stages and convention halls and say that me and everyone like me should be stoned to death.”

She does, however, concede that under the circumstances, “I can only put it down to really just a moment of poor impulse control. Had I thought for another second, of course I would’ve known [that it would be a problem for DC], and naturally, as soon as I had said it, I did know.”

At 10:30 p.m. ET, Felker-Martin said she received a phone call from DC Editor in Chief Marie Javins, who told her: “The story of the issue’s release had gone from being celebratory to something that DC and Warner Brothers couldn’t stand behind or defend.” When Felker-Martin asked why this was the case, she says that Javins replied, “That any kind of promotion of violence or harm is unacceptable to them.”

“I said that I’ve listened to Charlie Kirk being an overt Nazi for years of my life, and I had no regrets for what I said about him,” Felker-Martin said….

(4) 2025 NBA FICTION LONGLIST. The longlist for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction was posted on September 10 at Literary Hub. It does not appear from the descriptions that any of the 10 books are genre works.

(5) STAGE SHOWS WILL REPRESENT AT NEW YORK COMIC CON. “Playbill Podcast to Present Star-Studded Broadway Panels at New York Comic Con”.

Playbill is heading back to New York Comic Con for the fourth time. For those attending the convention, set for October 9-12 at the Jacob Javits Center, be sure to check out all the panels hosted by Playbill and the Playbill Podcast.

Broadway and Off-Broadway shows participating this year are set to include Hamilton, Little Shop of Horrors, Death Becomes Her, Beetlejuice, The Lost Boys, The Broadway Nerd Panel, and more. These exciting panels will include surprise Broadway and TV guest pop-ins, and more.

This year promises to be a dynamic and exciting celebration merging theatre, television and film, and comics. For all the latest information about talent appearances, times, and updates, visit Playbill.com/ComicCon.

(6) PRINT VS. SCREEN EXPERIENCE. If this had been our first exposure to Giant Freakin Robot’s Joshua Tyler things would have gone a lot differently. “12 Sci-Fi TV Shows You’re Better Off Reading”.

Science fiction was born in literature, first imagined by the pens of people like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. It has since become one of the most significant pieces of modern screen culture, where we’re wowed by amazing ideas broadcast through our screens. But even the best of those efforts doesn’t always capture the best of what the author intended.

These are the best science fiction TV shows worth reading….

For example:

11. Nightflyers

Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin is a sci-fi horror novella about a group of scientists on a doomed mission aboard a haunted spaceship. The TV adaptation tried to stretch that tight, claustrophobic story into a full series and lost what made it work.

The book is compact, tense, and disturbing, blending hard science fiction with psychological dread. The characters are sharper, the mystery more focused, and the pacing relentless. The show adds backstory and filler, but it dilutes the core. If you want the stripped-down, eerie version that sticks with you, the novella delivers everything the series tried and failed to

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

September 14, 1936 — Walter Koenig, 89.

By Paul Weimer. Of course, we should begin with Star Trek: the Original Series, where he played Ensign Chekov, and continued that role (and sadly not much else for decades). Unlike a lot of his colleagues on Star Trek, his work did not expand much beyond it. It’s a shame, because even for his hammy Russian accent and attitudes, he brought real heart to the character with his skills. 

Walter Koenig

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, of course, led to a potential continuity error for Koenig’s Khan: Koenig had not joined the original Star Trek series until season two and was ostensibly not on the Enterprise when Khan was around (Space Seed is a season one episode).  So how could Khan recognize his face?  The fan explanation that Chekov was on third shift in season one, and so nevler showed up on the show, but Khan ran into him offscreen late at night does work, I suppose. 

But Koenig in the end did find a role equal to Chekov in the end, and truth be told, I think I prefer him in his role. It is of course as Psi-Cop Al Bester in Babylon 5. I remember first seeing him on screen, and given the name of the character, I practically bounced with excitement. I had known none of the actors in the show from prior work…but here came a familiar face, and with a highly appropriate name. And his character is so complete, and so perfectly diametrically opposite anything from Pavel Chekov, that I liked Koenig’s role and character immediately. And his skill as an actor shows, the menace and veneer of politeness is the very definition of “Affably Evil”…with a side order of sociopathy. 

It all went a long way and a lot of the work to helping me to like the character, and frankly, given some of the unevenness of the first season of B5, his appearance was a breath of fresh air that the show needed. I enjoyed all of his subsequent appearances in the series.

From Ensign to a Psi-Cop. Its not a large genre oeuvre for Koenig, but two notable and genre-defining roles is two more than most people get, indeed. But, frankly, while I would find his Bester intelligent to talk to, I’d be safer having a drink with Chekov, any day.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) NEWS ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The real reason ice is slippery, revealed after 200 years.  “The real reason ice is slippery, revealed after 200 years” at ScienceDaily.

For centuries, people believed ice was slippery because pressure and friction melted a thin film of water. But new research from Saarland University reveals that this long-standing explanation is wrong. Instead, the slipperiness comes from the subtle interaction of molecular dipoles between ice and surfaces like shoes or skis. These microscopic electrical forces disorder the crystal structure of ice, creating a thin liquid layer even at temperatures near absolute zero. The discovery overturns nearly 200 years of scientific thought and has wide implications for physics and winter sports alike….

(10) WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE OUT THE WINDOW. “60 years after Gemini, newly processed images reveal incredible details” reports Ars Technica.

Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.

However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.

Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA’s first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.

The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA’s Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America’s first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it….

Ars: They used modified Hasselblad cameras during Apollo to capture these amazing images. What types of cameras were used during Mercury and Gemini?

Saunders: Mercury was more basic cameras. So on the very first missions, NASA didn’t want the astronaut to take a camera on board. The capsules were tiny. They were very busy. They’re very short missions, obviously very groundbreaking missions. So, the first couple of missions, there was a camera out of the porthole window, just taking photographs automatically. But it was John Glenn on his mission (Mercury-Atlas 6) who said, “No, I want to take a camera. People want to know what it’s going to be like to be an astronaut. They’re going to want to look at Earth through the window. I’m seeing things no humans ever seen before.” So he literally saw a $40 camera in a drugstore on his way after a haircut at Cocoa Beach. He thought, “That’s perfect.” And he bought it himself, and then NASA adapted it. They put a pistol grip on to help him to use it. And with it, he took the first still photographs of Earth from space.

So it was the early astronauts that kind of drove the desire to take cameras themselves, but they were quite basic. Wally Schirra (Mercury-Atlas 8) then took the first Hasselblad. He wanted medium format, better quality, but really, the photographs from Mercury aren’t as stunning as Gemini. It’s partly the windows and the way they took the photos, and they’d had little experience. Also, preservation clearly wasn’t high up on the agenda in Mercury, because the original film is evidently in a pretty bad state. The first American in space is an incredibly important moment in history. But every single frame of the original film of Alan Shepard’s flight was scribbled over with felt pen, it’s torn, and it’s fixed with like a piece of sticky tape. But it’s a reminder that these weren’t taken for their aesthetic quality. They weren’t taken for posterity. You know, they were technical information. The US was trying to catch up with the Soviets. Preservation wasn’t high up on the agenda.

(11) IF COMET QUACKS LIKE A DUCK. “NASA Scientist Disputes Claim That Mysterious Object Headed Into Solar System Was Sent by Aliens” – Futurism has the story.

NASA has thrown cold water on Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s theory that interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS was sent to us by an extraterrestrial civilization — a sobering albeit unsurprising conclusion that just might put the captivating hypothesis to rest once and for all.

In early July, astronomers first discovered the object, which was only the third interstellar visitor ever detected in the solar system.

Since then, Loeb has advanced the “tantalizing possibility” that 3I/ATLAS was “sent towards the inner solar system by design” and could even be releasing “mini-probes” to explore further.

That’s despite a growing consensus that the object is a comet, a ball of ice and dust that offgases material as it screams closer to the Sun….

…But as NASA’s lead scientist for solar system small bodies, Tom Statler, told The Guardian that it’s far more likely to be a comet.

“It looks like a comet,” he said. “It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know.”

“It’s a comet,” he concluded….

(12) JURASSIC PARK – EVEN DINOSAURS WEREN’T SAFE FROM THIS GIANT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The creature might have been more than 3.5 metres long, with powerful jaws and serrated, flesh-cutting teeth.

A giant crocodile-like apex predator hunted large prey — probably including medium-sized dinosaurs — around 70 million years ago in what is now southern Argentina.

During a dig in the Patagonia region, Fernando Novas at the Bernardino Rivadavia Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires and his colleagues unearthed the complete skull, spine and hips of a large crocodile-like creature — one of the best preserved peirosaurid fossils from this period.

On the basis of its skull size, the new species, dubbed Kostensuchus atrox, might have been upwards of 3.5 metres long and weighed 250 kilograms. Its size, powerful jaws and serrated teeth suggest that it hunted large animals, making it the second-largest predator in the region at the time.

Primary research here.

(13) SCOPE IT OUT. [Item by Nina Shepardson.] The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered evidence that one of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, about 40 light-years away, may have an atmosphere.  “Most Earth-Like Planet Yet May Have Been Found Just 40 Light-Years Away” at ScienceAlert.

One of the worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 system, a mere 40 light-years away, just might be clad in a life-supporting atmosphere.

In exciting new JWST observations, the Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e shows hints of a gaseous envelope similar to our own, one that could facilitate liquid water on the surface.

Although the detection is ambiguous and needs extensive follow-up to find out what the deal is, it’s the closest astronomers have come yet in their quest to find a second Earth.

“TRAPPIST-1e remains one of our most compelling habitable-zone planets, and these new results take us a step closer to knowing what kind of world it is,” says astronomer Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), co-author on one of two papers detailing the findings….

(14) A LUNG-POWERED SYMPHONY. [Itemb by Daniel Dern.] Not intrinsically sfnal, but in honor of Filthy Pierre/Erwin Strauss, the hallway soundtrack of many cons… From the “Melodica Men”.

  • “Flight of the Bumblebee”
  • “Ride of the Valkyries”
  • “Bohemian Rhapsody”
  • “Rhapsody in Blue”
  • “West Side Story”

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

AudioFile Magazine’s SF and Fantasy Audiobook Picks for September

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AudioFile Magazine highlights their sff/h audiobook recommendations for September 2025.

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

  • By Ray Bradbury | Read by Prentice Onayemi, Ari Fliakos, Marin Ireland
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • [Simon & Schuster Audio | 8.75 hrs.]

REVIEW

Ray Bradbury’s collection of 18 interconnected stories is a beloved classic. In “The Long Rain,” Prentice Onayemi captures the brooding madness of a group of astronauts who are stranded. In “The Rocket,” Ari Fliakos delivers the absurd humor of a destitute father who decides that it’s better for his children to watch a “simulated illusion” than to actually go to Mars. And in “Zero Hour,” Marin Ireland pinpoints the horror of a child who is helping aliens to invade her home. The superb narrators make these works extra edgy. 

THE FOLDED SKY: White Space, Book 3

  • By Elizabeth Bear | Read by Sarah Slimani
  • [Simon & Schuster Audio | 14.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

Narrator Sarah Slimani’s stellar characterizations enliven the third installment of the Folded Sky series. Dr. Sunya Song embarks on a deep-space mission to study data from the Baomind, an ancient artificially intelligent construct. Slimani’s vibrant narration complements this character-driven sci-fi mystery. As Dr. Song wrangles research time, she’s simultaneously tasked with investigating an attempted murder, defending the space station, and spending quality time with family—all while a mysterious presence lurks in the periphery. A perfect pairing of performance and writing makes listening a treat.

THE SHIVERS: Feel the Fear

  • By Owen King, Catriona Ward, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Joe Hill | Read by Robert Fass, Kyla Garcia, Moniqua Plante, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Grover Gardner
  • [Brilliance Audio | 5.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

In these five brand-new dark tales delivered by five award-winning narrators, the consequences are subtle, jarring, and dire. In “Jackknife” by Joe Hill, Robert Fass recounts the story of a man who is looking for second chances, first, with feelings of hope and then, with unabashed fear. When a child meets a mysterious presence on a summer vacation, Moniqua Plante brings a mother’s sense of dread to “The Blanks,” by Grady Hendrix. Kyla Garcia, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, and Grover Gardner give equally skilled performances to their stories, in which even the most mundane situations demand that a terrifying price be paid.

VOLATILE MEMORY: The Volatile Memory Duology, Book 1

  • By Seth Haddon | Read by Emily Gibbons Bouchard
  • [Macmillan Audio | 5 hrs.]

REVIEW

Narrator Emily Gibbons Bouchard makes this amped-up sci-fi romance a gripping listen. Called to a nearby planet by a mysterious beacon, scavenger Wylla goes on the hunt for what she hopes is a valuable find. What she discovers is something even greater: A mask imbued with the power of its last wearer, a hawk. Donning the mask, Wylla gains the hawk’s memories and, avoiding other hunters on her tail, embarks on a quest to avenge the hawk’s murder. Bouchard’s narration captures both Wylla’s pride in her transgender identity and her growing attachment to Sable, the hawk’s former owner.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: New Tales of Stephen King’s THE STAND

  • By Christopher Golden, Brian Keene [Eds.], Stephen King [Intro.] | Read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, Adenrele Ojo
  • [Simon & Schuster Audio | 27.25 hrs.]

REVIEW

Sean Patrick Hopkins and Adenrele Ojo narrate a compelling addition to the world created by Stephen King in THE STAND. The anthology collects stories set during, after, and long after the events of the iconic novel. Both narrators work to produce a performance that’s both engaging and dynamic—perfect for fans of THE STAND or those who revel in exploring the fragility of civilization.

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