Pixel Scroll 1/17/26 A Fist Full Of Scrolls, A Pocketful Of Pixels

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(1) ON WITH THEIR HEADS! Camestros Felapton’s marathon history of stfnal robots and their antecedents arrives at Doctor Who’s “Cyberman”.

…The idea of cyborgs as inherently malign is intertwined with prejudices against both disability and bodily modification. These first Cybermen are presented as people encased in dehumaninisng technology. It was a challenge for the 1960’s costume design to adequately represent this kind of body horror without it looking comical and arguably would not be properly represented until the late 1980s with the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The second Doctor would encounter the Cybermen repeatedly during his tenure (1966-1969). The appearance and nature of the Cybermen would be gradually refined with each appearance, with them adopting a more metallic and integrated design. By the 1968 serial The Invasion the core look of the Cybermen has stabilised but in the process they had essentially become robots of the mechanical men variety. The underlying idea that they were cyborgs remained but was secondary to their role as remorseless machines who are emotionless and logical (well, not so logical that they don’t have weirdly complicated plans for world domination)….

(2) CRASH AND CARRY. “Pokémon card boom draws collectors and armed robbers to one Manhattan shop” – Gothamist has the story.

Armed robbers targeted a Manhattan Pokémon shop this week in a heist that was unsurprising to trading-card fanatics, who say merchandise from the franchise has exploded in value and is being tracked by criminals.

On Wednesday evening, three masked and hooded men, including one armed with a handgun, walked into the Poké Court shop in Chelsea, an NYPD spokesperson said. One of them smashed display cases with a hammer and stole what the owner of the shop said is more than $120,000 worth of merchandise.

Courtney Chin, the store owner, said the robbery was unfortunate for her business, but not entirely surprising given a recent rise in interest in the cards — including among criminals.

“It’s almost like a rite of passage as a card shop. You just get robbed,” she said.

Pokémon trading cards and other collectibles associated with the Japanese media franchise have exploded in popularity in recent years, according to Matt Quinn, the vice president of CGC cards, a company that certifies trading cards. An auction company is currently offering a Pikachu illustrator card that influencer Logan Paul has worn around his neck for nearly $6 million, Quinn noted.

(3) SALMAN RUSHDIE DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] He’s Salman Rushdie the author. He’s Salman Rushdie the survivor. He’s Salman Rushdie the symbol. 

He’s also Salman the loving and beloved husband. And “Sal from Brooklyn,” the Yankees fan. 

And now he’s the subject of a documentary about the knife attack that almost ended his life and his recovery from it. “Salman Rushdie Doc ‘Knife’ Reveals How He Survived Attack” in The Hollywood Reporter.

The scene is intimate, haunting: Salman Rushdie, just a few days after being brutally attacked on a stage at an upstate New York retreat, is lying in a hospital bed. He is barely able to talk, the wounds in his neck archeologically deep, an eye bulging out grotesquely like in a horror movie. He will later wonder if he’ll ever get out of the room.

The footage from Alex Gibney’s new documentary Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, shot as part of a video diary by Rushdie’s wife, the novelist and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, opens a window painted shut. We remember the viral video of the attack scene, where a young man that August morning in 2022 came at Rushdie and the author tried to fight him off in front of a shocked audience. What we hadn’t seen is the aftermath — the closeness to death, the sheer psychic terror….

(4) THE HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. SF2 Concatenation’s Spring issue includes a rundown on sff’s important anniversaries this year: “2026”.

the 40th anniversary of the publication of:
                    Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead
                    Bob Shaw’s The Ragged Astronauts.
                    and Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime

the 60th anniversary of Star Trek’s first broadcast.

the 60th anniversary of the publication of:
                    J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World
                    Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!
                    Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
                    Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon
                    and Larry Niven’s The World of Ptavvs.
                    Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal (a.k.a. And Call Me Conrad)

On the cinematic and TV front 2026 sees the 50th anniversary of
                    (the aforementioned Star Trek)
                    Fantastic Voyage
                    Batman
                    Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD
                    One Million Years BC
                    and Fahrenheit 451.

(5) A REVIEW OF SFF IN TRANSLATION. Joachim Boaz and Rachel Cordasco review the 1970 short story “Slum” by Austrian SF writer Herbert W. Franke: “Short Story Review: Herbert W. Franke’s ‘Slum’ (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973)” at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review

Austrian-born author and cyberneticist Herbert W. Franke used speculative fiction to imagine distant planets and alternative societies for over half a century. Known to Anglophone readers mostly for three novels translated in the 1970s (The Orchid Cage, The Mind Net, and Zone Null) and a few short stories, Franke asked readers to think through what “exploration” really means and the responsibilities that the explorers have to those whom they find (or don’t find)….

(6) JUST THE FACTS. On Facebook, Joe Haldeman gutted two erroneous biographies, one the Wikipedia entry about him (“Joe Haldeman – Wikipedia”), and the other Macmillian’s “About The Author” paragraph (“Joe Haldeman | Authors | Macmillan”).

I just came across this interesting – untrue – “fact” on a Wikipedia entry about me —

“As a young man, Joe Haldeman joined the U.S. Army not as a career, but hoping to become a scientist after serving in the war in Vietnam. He came out of the jungle with a bullet wound, a Purple Heart and a new calling: to become a writer. Even brief military careers can be life-changing.”

I was not that young, at 24; I didn’t really “join” the army – was drafted first — I didn’t want to “become a scientist” – and in fact had to initiate the paperwork to actually get the Purple Heart after I got out of Vietnam.

(Writing wasn’t a “new calling” to me; I started writing poetry when I was 11 or 12, and was starting to write fiction as a teenager.)

At that age, though, I still thought I had a chance to become an astronaut. I was aiming for NASA’s “Scientist as Astronaut” program, and did have the minimum academic requirement, a degree in astronomy.

I was drafted out of college, which I think happened to any male student who turned 24. (At 25 you would be too old to be drafted.)

The Wikipedia writer was just making lazy assumptions, typing out a fast paragraph. Nobody uses Wiki as a primary source.

— and on the heels of that load of inaccurate typing from Wikipedia, came this manure cart load from Macmillon’s “About the Author” —

“Having won the Hugo and Nebula Award’s more times than any other author, Joe Haldeman is an ultimate household name in science fiction. A Vietnam Veteran and Purple Heart recipient, since the original publication of The Forever War, Joe has maintained a continuous string of SF best-sellers, and as a speaker and panelist, has been a constant presence on the SF convention circuit. A longtime tenured Professor of Creative Writing at MIT, beyond his own career, from Cory Doctorow to John Scalzi, Haldeman is widely acknowledged as a key mentor figure to many of this generation’s crop of rising SF stars.”

I am not a “household name” in any house of any repute; I have had at most one SF best-seller; I’m only sporadically seen on the “SF convention circuit,” wherever that may be. That last sentence was evidently written by an ill-programmed computer.

(7) PAUL GIAMATTI Q&A. [Item by Joel Zakem.] Actor Paul Giamatti on Star Trek and James White’s Sector General novels, among other things: “33 Years Later, Paul Giamatti Pays Homage To An Underrated Star Trek Villain” at Inverse.

… And yet, the story that Giamatti happens to be a Star Trek fan, and parlayed that enthusiasm into his new role, is really just the latest outcome from a life infused with science fiction. Giamatti taking on this role isn’t just stunt casting; it seems to represent an outgrowth of his artistic philosophy. It wouldn’t be right to call Giamatti a sci-fi actor outright, and yet, his career is filled with great sci-fi roles: the most affecting episode of Black Mirror Season 7 starred him; if you listen to the audiobook version of Philip K. Dick’s classic A Scanner Darkly, that’s him narrating the entire thing; and don’t forget he was in Planet of the Apes back in 2001. “Science fiction, I know, is, in fact, the way I see the world,” he says….

… The first time I met Paul Giamatti was almost 20 years ago, while he was digging around in the corner of a used bookstore in New York City, where I worked part-time. He was looking for a series of vintage science fiction novels about outer space doctors. Back then, I soon forgot the title and author of the series, but today, when I bring up this question to Giamatti for our Starfleet Academy interview, he instantly knows what I’m talking about.

“Ah yes, the series is called Sector General, by the Irish writer James White,” he says with geeky pride. “It’s a series of short stories and novels about a hospital in outer space. They’re the closest thing to Star Trek that isn’t Star Trek that I’ve ever encountered. They’re really great. They should be better known than they are.”…

(8) SULTANA RAZA READING. SFWA recently posted to YouTube its Zoom of the “Speculative Poetry OPEN MIC – March 29, 2025 with Featured Poet Sultana Raza”.

Our featured poet is Sultana Raza. Her work has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Star*line, and Silver Blade, with a story forthcoming in Flame Tree Publishing’s Achilles Anthology. An independent scholar and accomplished poet, Sultana has presented on Keats and Tolkien at international conferences and read her work across Europe and the U.S. Her writing blends vivid imagination with deep literary insight. You can find @sultana_raza_writer_poet on Instagram.

(9) SFF FILM SAYINGS. ScreenRant savors “10 Genius Sci-Fi Movie Quotes That Stand The Test Of Time”. In all honesty, only about three of them are remarkable. What do you think of ScreenRant’s choice for Number One?

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” (“2001: A Space Odyssey”)

If you’re already nervous about A.I., there are movies you should avoid, as many of them explore the role of A.I. as villains, but none of them come close to being as terrifying as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Douglas Rain’s voice makes HAL 9000 an unforgettable villain who’ll steal your sleep if you have Alexa in your room.

The chill that goes down my spine every time I hear HAL say these words and reveal himself as a nefarious AI with plans of taking control of the ship after killing its inhabitants is why I believe the quote is a stroke of genius. The non-compliance with a sinister tone that mocks the expectation of obedience makes it terrifying.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones. (Died 2024.)

This Scroll you’re getting James Earl Jones, most notably known in our circles as the voice of a certain Sith Lord whose voice he did up to Star Wars Rise of Skywalker, but he’s got a much more, sometimes surprisingly, diverse career here. So let’s see what he’s done…

His film debut was as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52’s bombardier in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Great way to start off his genre, I’d say.

In 1969, Jones participated in making short films for what became Sesame Street. These were combined with animated segments, then were shown to groups of children to see if the format appealed to children. As cited by production notes included in the Sesame Street: Old School 1969–1974 DVD, the short that had the greatest impact with test audiences was one showing a bald-headed Jones counting slowly to ten. And yes, it was shown on the show when it aired.

I truly love him in Conan the Barbarian as Thulsa Doom, an antagonist for the character Kull of Atlantis. Thulsa Doom was created by Robert E. Howard in the “Delcardes’ Cat” story. Neat character for him, I’d say. 

He’s in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold with the name of Umslopogaas, a fearless warrior and old friend of Allan Quatermain. I looked him up in the original novel, Allan Quatermain. Please don’t make me do that again. Really. Don’t. 

Ahhh, Field of Dreams: “Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it.” Great role. To say more would involve spoilers, right? 

He voices Mufusa, the lion murdered by his brother in The Lion King and its sequel, who death does not stop from being present. Really present. Extraordinary performing by him. 

Did you know that he narrated Stallone’s Judge Dredd? Well he did. He was uncredited at time but as is with these things, it didn’t stay a secret permanently, did it? 

He had series appearances on Faerie Tale Theatre (as, and I simply love it, Genie of the Lamp, Genie of the Ring), Highway to Heaven, Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories, Picket Fences, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, (he was the uncredited narrator of 3rd Rock from the Sun (maybe he’s the nameless narrator for all of the multiverse?), Touched by an Angel in which he’s the Angel of Angels, cool name, Stargate SG-1 , Merlin and finally as himself on The Big Bang Theory.

He hosted Long Ago and Far Away, a children’s series that lasted thirty-five episodes with each of them based on a folk or fairy tale. Stop motion animation, live actors and traditional animation were all used.

That’s it, folks.

James Earl Jones

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) GAME OF THRONES ALUMNA CHECKS IN. [Item by Steven French.] As Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner had to adapt to a steep learning curve but seems to have come back down to earth: “’It’s very embarrassing’: Sophie Turner on rage, romance and the horror of watching Game of Thrones” in the Guardian.

Sophie Turner has a screwball comedy vibe in real life – elegant trouser suit, arch but friendly expression, perfect hair, she looks ready for some whipsmart repartee and a sundowner. She seems very comfortable in her own skin, which is unusual anyway when you’re not quite 30, but especially incongruous given her various screen personas: first, in Game of Thrones. 

Thirteen when she was cast as Sansa Stark, 14 when she started filming, she embodied anxious, aristocratic self-possession at an age when a regular human can’t even keep track of their own socks. Six seasons in, arguably at peak GoT impact, she became Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse, a role she reprised in 2019 for Dark Phoenix, action-studded and ram-jammed with superpowers.

Now she’s the lead in Steal, a Prime Video drama about a corporate heist, though that makes it sound quite desk and keyboard-based when, in fact, it is white-knuckle tense and alarmingly paced…

… “I learned how to act on that [GoT] set, and now I’m thinking: that’s not how to do it. That’s not what I do these days. It’s very embarrassing. Imagine if you were learning to sing, and all your lessons had been filmed and broadcast. It’s just an uncomfortable experience. I think the imposter syndrome remains. But I don’t think there’s any actor who doesn’t have that.”…

(13) WHEN A LIBRARY CARD BECOMES A GET OUT OF JAIL CARD. The Guardian reports “Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books”.

Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers appear to have been reading up on the country’s penal code and have found a way to help their client reduce the 27-year prison sentence he received last year for plotting a coup: by reading books.

There is only one problem: the former far-right Brazilian president has never been known as a bibliophile. “Sorry, I don’t have time to read,” Bolsonaro once declared. “It’s been three years since I read a book.”

Brazilian law contains a literary device through which book-reading inmates can cut their sentences by four days for each title read. On Thursday, a supreme court judge authorised the disgraced former president to take part in the scheme after a request from his legal team.

Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper famed for his hostility to democracy, minorities, the Amazon rainforest and the arts, is unlikely to appreciate the approved reading list. It includes Brazilian works on Indigenous rights, racism, the environment and the violence meted out by the country’s 1964-85 dictatorship – a regime Bolsonaro openly supported.

One title, Ana Maria Gonçalves’ 950-page Um Defeito de Cor (A Colour Defect), tells “the history of Brazil … from the point of view of a Black woman”.

Also featured is Democracy!, a children’s non-fiction picture book by the English-born author-illustrator Philip Bunting…

(14) KEEP WATCHING THE CAPE. The Guardian keeps an eye on Florida as “Nasa readies its most powerful rocket for round-the-moon flight”.

Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The flight will mark only the second test of Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the first with a crew onboard. The four astronauts will live and work in the Orion capsule, testing life support and communications systems and practising docking manoeuvres….

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Cora Buhlert, Joel Zakem, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Paul Weimer Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War

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  • This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar (Simon & Shuster, 2019)

By Paul Weimer: Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s  This is How You Lose the Time War is a rivalry, a love story, a conflict, and a meeting of perspectives told through world-changing time travelers’ letters.

The idea was inevitable, and originated relatively early in the history of time travel narratives. If one person can invent a time machine, and if history can be changed, then more than one person is going to invent a time machine, and the goals of those forces are going to not be congruent. From Jack Williamson and Fritz Leiber to the Terminator, to novellas like Alasdair Reynolds’ Permafrost and Kate Heartfield’s Alice Payne, and to Annalee Newitz’s The Future of Another Timeline, there is a lot of mileage to the idea of a Changewar, where different time traveling factions seek to change history. Readers here at File 770 can cite chapter and verse on stories, novellas and novels that have used the idea.

Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War takes this subgenre of a subgenre in a unique direction by telling the story of two agents from opposite sides, who find something in each other, greater than the causes they separately serve. That by itself would be an interesting enough concept to pin down a novella, but the authors have an additional, delightful wrinkle: The agents do not meet, but rather communicate in letters to each other.  Yes friends, this is an epistolary novel.

In a world of Twitter, and Bluesky, and instant social media, long form letters are a delightful retro technology and form. Epistolary novels and stories, never the most common of forms even when letters were dominant as a means of communication, are exceedingly distinctive just by their format in this day and age. It’s a bold choice by the authors to have the two agents, Red (from a technological end state utopia) and Blue (from a biological super consciousness utopia) to start their correspondence and to have their letters (which take increasingly unusual forms as described in the narrative) be the backbone of the action. Every chapter has one of the principals in action, and a letter from the other principals, giving a harmonic balance for the reader as far as perspective. But it is within the letters themselves that the novella truly sings and shows its power.

Those letters, those perspectives, shift from adversarial relationship to something more as the two best time agents in all of history find more in common with each other than in their own sides, Agency and Garden. I was half expecting, going in, a narrative more like Leiber or Anderson, or the like, where jonbar points are displayed and fought over, and changed back and forth as the two sides change history. And there is some of that but it is in the most general of senses, with lots of references to alternate strands and timelines. The worlds that were and what might be, and could be, are really just smoke and reflections, pale ghosts compared to how Red and Blue bare their souls and hearts to each other. So this is not a story for deep explorations of how saving Archduke Ferdinand or giving Genghis Khan a longer life might change the timelines. Sure, there are handwaves in the direction of changing things here and there, but those are not the point. The novella is not really oriented toward pulse pounding action, either, although there is a culminating sequence toward the end of the novella where the style does change a bit to allow for it.

What this novella provides for the target readers is an extremely literary focus. There are clever bits with wordplay, allusions, references, and even a book recommendation or two mixed in with that. The letters, starting as boasting and admonitions that each side is going to win, slowly change and evolve, as the adversarial relationship finally turns to respect, and then love. The power and the strength of the letters become richer and richer as the novella continues, as Red and Blue really start to really understand each other, and themselves, that the novella truly shines with the full power of the writers. The seamlessness of the two writers writing is also noteworthy–I can make a guess as to which writer might have written which side more predominantly but I cannot possibly be sure of that. Like Red and Blue themselves, the two sides blend into each other, and while I may slightly prefer the letters of Blue to Red, the beauty and poetry of both sides’ letters, especially in the latter portion, is magical. I was moved deeply by the slow burn love story that unfolds in the words in their letters.

That is the real magic to that writing. Going in, I would have guessed that El-Mohtar would provide the heavy lifting of the poetic language for the letters. I’ve usually had a greater conception of Gladstone in terms of excellent prose, not poetry. But then I remember Gladstone’s history teaching in rural China, and realize that some of the language and forms we get, the style and pacing, have echoes in that corpus of literature as well.

There is a line in one of the letters, “All good stories travel from the outside in”, and This is How You Lose the Time War fulfills that promise.

Pixel Scroll 1/16/26 See A Pixel Pulled Out Of A Hat. It Doesn’t End Well. And No, I Don’t Know How The Pixel Got Into The Hat

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(1) CHILLING EFFECT. Don Blyly of Uncle Hugo’s in Minneapolis is one of the bookstore owners quoted in Publishers Weekly’s report “Twin Cities Bookstores Contend With ICE”.

…Sales are also down at Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s, known as the Uncles, according to owner Don Blyly. “A lot of people are demonstrating instead of reading books,” Blyly said, adding that sales last Saturday, usually the store’s biggest day of the week, were down two-thirds.

“A lot of my customers are afraid to leave their houses,” Byly said, “and there’s a lot going over on Lake Street”—a major artery through Minneapolis a block away from the Uncles that’s lined with Latinx restaurants, markets, and other businesses….

(2) GOLDEN REEL AWARD NOMINEES. The Motion Picture Sound Editors released the nominations for the 2026 MPSE Golden Reel Awards on January 12. Probably two-thirds of the works up for the award are of genre interest. The complete list is at the link. Murderbot is one of the nominees.

Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Short Form

Murderbot: “All Systems Red”
Apple TV+
Supervising Sound Editor: Tyler Whitham MPSE
Supervising ADR Editor: Danielle McBride MPSE 
Sound Effects Editor: Craig MacLellan
Dialogue Editor: Ève Corrêa-Guedes
Foley Artist: John Elliot

The winners will be revealed on March 8. As previously announced, two honorary awards will also be presented at the gala: Kathleen Kennedy will receive the 2026 Filmmaker Award, and supervising sound editor Mark Mangini will receive the Career Achievement Award.

(3) TIME FOR AN OSCAR PARADIGM SHIFT. “The Oscars Can’t Pretend Anime Doesn’t Exist Anymore” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Traditionally, the Animation Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has not been known for risk-taking. Since the best animated feature Oscar was introduced in 2002, the category has overwhelmingly rewarded studio-backed, 3D CGI family fare of the Disney-Pixar-DreamWorks school. In more than two decades, exceptions have been rare: one claymation winner (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), one stop-motion drama (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) and one independent (last year’s Latvian breakout Flow).

As East Asian animation — from Japanese anime to South Korean hanguk aeni and Chinese donghua — exploded into a global pop-culture force, the Academy has remained largely unimpressed. As far as Oscar voters are concerned, Asian animation can be defined as beginning and ending with the films of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron) and his devotees at Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki’s singular style — his hand-drawn, painterly aesthetic and his thematic focus on a child’s-eye view of morally complex, humanistic tales — has been treated as the sole Asian animation worthy of entry into the Oscar canon. To date, Mamoru Hosoda’s 2019 time-travel drama Mirai remains the only non-Ghibli anime feature ever nominated.

Things will be different this year.

Two of the season’s animation frontrunners — Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters and anime blockbuster Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, both Golden Globe nominees — have little in common with a Miyazaki movie. KPop is a neon-soaked action musical about a chart-topping girl group, Huntrix, juggling stadium tours with their secret lives as superpowered demon hunters. Demon Slayer, the first of a series-ending film trilogy, is a master class in hyper-kinetic, violent battles and high-stakes melodrama, in which a sequence of epic duels is intercut with emotional character backstories. Dark horse contenders include Scarlet from Hosoda, an action-fantasy reimagining of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as a surreal revenge tale; and Ryu Nakayama’s Chainsaw Man, another anime series to film adaptation, featuring a hero whose arms and head turn into chainsaws, who falls for a girl who can transform into a nuclear bomb….

(4) VERY LATE BREAKING NEWS. Last November is when Scott Edelman’s collection 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded was released. How did I miss that? I don’t know, but let me clue you in about it today.

2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Scott Edelman’s professional writing career, and he says:

…Though much of my fiction over the decades has been horrific — so much so I’ve received eight Bram Stoker Award nominations, plus Publishers Weekly has said of my 2020 collection of eerie tales, Things That Never Happened, that “his talent is undeniable” — I’ve found that as the world itself has become more horrifying, my fiction became less so. That wasn’t anything done by choice, but rather as a natural response to the terrifying tenor of the world.

And so I found myself instead writing mostly of robots rather than zombies, and deep space missions have been swapped in for serial killers. Time travel has taken the place of terror.

Oh, don’t worry. I haven’t abandoned horror. I never could. But as a percentage of tales lately told, science fiction has in recent years been winning out.

As proof of that alteration to my psyche, I offer up the contents of my newest collection, 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded. Included among the thirteen stories you’ll find “The Stranded Time Traveler Embraces the Inevitable,” the writing of which released me from my despair over the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as breaking the only writer’s block I’ve ever experienced; “Learning to Accept What’s to Come,” in which two robots wrestle with surviving as humanity seems headed to become merely a memory; the title story, in which our species — or some of us anyway — seeks a new home as our solar system reaches the end of its life cycle; plus ten more glimpses of the future….

(5) WHAT HE LIKES ABOUT AKOT7K. NPR’s Glen Weldon says this series travels light: “’A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ review: ‘Game of Thrones’ for the haters”.

…A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms requires no homework; it’s a small, grounded story you can watch without a wiki open on your phone.

In fact, it’s easier to start by listing the stuff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms doesn’t have, before getting to the stuff it does.

No magic. No dragons. No epic sweep. No maps. No internecine family trees. No sexual assault. No incestuous aristocrats. No female nudity. (Male nudity, however? Including some full frontal that’s … markedly um … full? Yep.) No “Bend the knee!” No vast armies somehow traversing entire continents on foot over a long weekend.

But don’t get it twisted: This is still a show based on Martin’s fiction, and while it may not suffer from his above writerly tics, it doubles down on others: The only women with speaking parts are either sex workers or love interests. And those love interests swiftly get relegated to plot devices, as violence against them spurs our hero — who is, after all, a literal white knight — into action.

The fact that it feels so wholly and gratifyingly different than both GoT and HotD is the product of a combination of factors — length (just six episodes, each around 30 minutes or so), point of view (instead of rich ruling families, AKotSK is told from the perspective of Westeros’ commoners), scope (the entire series takes place over the course of a few days, entirely in one location — a jousting tournament) and, especially, tone….

(6) THIS WOULD TURN IT INTO A LAUGHING ACADEMY. “Stephen Miller Begs William Shatner To Save ‘Star Trek’ From Wokeness” reports HuffPost.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller took a brief moment away from his goal of deporting immigrants in order to offer a suggestion on how to improve “Star Trek.”

And, yes, he was mocked.

The franchise’s latest show, “Starfleet Academy,” debuted this week on Paramount Plus and, true to the original vision, shows characters from different backgrounds working together for a greater cause.

So, of course, Miller hated it.

On Thursday, he responded to a post from the @EndWokeness X account that showed a brief clip of three female characters competently dealing with a serious issue by calling the clip “tragic.”

Miller then made a suggestion that Paramount Plus “save the franchise” by bringing back 94-year-old William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the original 1960s-era show, and “give him total creative control.”…

…But on X, the mockery commenced, including this joke from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office: “Stephen Miller saw an alien on the bridge and started drafting an executive order.”…

… Some people pointed out the franchise’s history of promoting civil rights and Shatner’s own commitment to progressive politics….

…One person did point out a possible reason why an “America First” guy like Miller might want to rethink his “Star Trek” suggestion: Shatner isn’t an American citizen…

(7) UNIVERSAL STUDIOS’ CLASSIC SCARES. CrimeReads presents “A Brief, Disturbing History of Universal Monsters”. Keith Roysdon’s full thoughts about each are at the link.

Although it’s long been said that Sherlock Holmes, Mickey Mouse and Superman are the most familiar characters in fiction – especially if we take into account all the variants of those characters – you could make the argument that the Universal monsters, the creatures first adapted from vintage tales and legends by Universal Studios from the 1920s onward, are equally recognizable. Their faces appear on Halloween candy, they stomp and snarl through cartoons and pop music and commercials and their on-screen iterations are endless, timeless and modern, as the recent “Frankenstein” adaptation demonstrates.

These creatures inspire nightmares and box-office and, after more than a century of film, continue to be a cultural force.

Inspired in part by the relatively recent films that bring these legends to life, I wanted to touch on the waves of film adaptations of what might be Hollywood’s first and most durable intellectual property. (Sorry for bringing it down to the IP level, but the box-office immortality of the creature creations is a big factor in their cultural immortality.)

A quick note: I’m limiting myself to only a handful of what I’m defining as the Universal monster “stars,” namely Dracula, Frankenstein (and his monster), the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Invisible Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. You could argue that other Universal staples like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Phantom of the Opera would be appropriate additions to the list and I wouldn’t even disagree. But I had to narrow the field a little. (And those monsters still get a shout-out.)…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 16, 1970 — Garth Ennis, 56.

Garth Ennis is without a doubt one of my favorite comic writers. Born in Northern Ireland, though a rare individual who grew up with no religious background (and you are fully aware why I’m mentioning that), he’s now resident in the States.

Next up on the list of series he wrote that he created and I seriously adore is Hellblazer with the supernatural detective John Constantine. I can’t say that I’ve read every issue of that series as I lost interest in it a decade or so ago but his work on it, mostly from issues forty to eighty-three, was among the best undertaken in the series. 

I’ve read all of the Preacher series, a disturbing story, twice. I have not seen the series that was spawned out of it. It lasted for four seasons, so the viewing audience liked it. What say y’all? Worth seeing? 

He had a run on The Authority for the Wildstorm imprint, that run being possibly the most annoying run in the history of the series as it focused on a character called Kev; and the first arc of the Authority spin-off series Midnighter, a character he admits was conceived as an anti-Superman by him and artist Brian Hitch. 

Before you ask, where’s the Marvel Comics, I looked at his work there and since I hadn’t read any of it, save random issues of his Punisher writing, I can’t say what is good and what isn’t. So do feel free to tell me what is good over there.

Garth Ennis

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) URSA MAJOR AWARDS NOMINATIONS OPEN. The public is invited to submit Ursa Major Awards nominations through February 5. “More formally known as the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Award, the Ursa Major Award is presented annually for excellence in the furry arts.”

The administrators have added two categories, one permanent, plus a one-shot.

We are pleased to announce a new category, Furry Streamers! When nominating names, please try and include links to their socials, such as their Youtube, Twitch, Etc.

For the 25th anniversary of the UMAs, we have a special category! Classic Anthro Videogames! This is a fun, one-time category to celebrate Anthropomorphic video games that never got a proper shot in the UMAs!

(11) LEGO’S ZELDA DIORAMA. Gizmodo tells readers how “Lego’s Next ‘Legend of Zelda’ Set Takes Us Back to ‘Ocarina of Time’”.

…This morning Lego and Nintendo unveiled Ocarina of Time: The Final Battle, a 1,003-piece diorama faithfully recreating the climactic fight from the beloved game. Taking place on a Triforce-badged display base recreating the fiery arena and ruins of Hyrule right out of the N64, the set includes three minifigures—Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganondorf—as well as a massive brick-built version of the latter’s transformation into Ganon.

The set itself also features a bevy of little features and nods to Ocarina, including a pile of rubble for the Ganondorf minifigure to burst out of, as well as a couple of items hidden away among the ruins in the form of a trio of recovery hearts (you’ll need them!) and the Megaton Hammer. And, of course, there’s a small display stand to pose Navi the fairy floating from nearby. But really, the focus is on that amazing, brick-built Ganon, which is fully poseable and comes with two massive greatswords for him to wield….

(12) DID E.T. CALL? “This SETI program is chasing down its final 100 signals: Could one of them be from aliens?” asks Space.com.

Astronomers are using China’s powerful FAST radio telescope to chase after 100 intriguing signals detected by the SETI@home project, which is run by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientists.

SETI@home, which ran from 1999 to 2020, had millions of users all around the world donating their CPU time to downloadable software that churned through data collected by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. In the end, 12 billion candidate narrowband signals were spotted. These signals appeared as “momentary blips of energy at a particular frequency coming from a particular point in the sky,” David Anderson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley and co-founder of the SETI@home project, said in a statement.

FAST, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, has been patiently following up on this century of candidate extraterrestrial signals since July 2025. Although observations and analysis are still ongoing, bitter experience has taught the SETI@home team to expect them all to turn out to be local radio frequency interference (RFI) rather than real extraterrestrial beacons.

But whatever their origin, they represent the culmination of one of the largest citizen science projects ever undertaken. It’s taken years to figure out how to properly scrutinize this vast amount of data.

“Until about 2016, we didn’t really know what we were going to do with these detections that we’d accumulated,” said Anderson. “We hadn’t figured out how to do the whole second part of the analysis.”…

… Eventually, at the supercomputer facilities of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, algorithms designed to spot RFI sorted the wheat from the chaff, reducing those 12 billion to 1 million, then 1,000. These 1,000 signals then had to be inspected manually, by eye, before being whittled down to 100 that deserved a second look….

… The scale of the project has gone far beyond the dreams of Anderson or anyone on his team when SETI@home began in 1999. They thought they might get 50,000 users if they were lucky. By the end of the first week they had 200,000 users, and within a year they had 2 million….

(13) TOPPING OFF. Smarter Every Day shared “Refueling a NUCLEAR REACTOR”.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George has also made a new Pitch Meeting video: “The Fantastic Four: First Steps Pitch Meeting”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/15/25 Anything You Can Scroll, I Can Scroll Better

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(1) NAACP IMAGE AWARDS. Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author is a nominee for the 2026 NAACP Image Awards in the Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction category. The complete list of nominees is at the link.

(2) GRRM AT 77. “Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin Isn’t Finished” learns The Hollywood Reporter.

…But first, we discuss the new show, which has a scrappy, low-key vibe compared to GoT or Dragon. The action is almost entirely set at a jousting tournament in a rural backwater of Westeros and follows the penniless knight Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his diminutive 10-year-old squire (Dexter Sol Ansell) as they enter the tourney to improve their fortunes. Across six episodes, the likable duo tangle with an array of powerful rival lords. “Dunk and Egg both face great Shakespearean jeopardy in Westeros, but there’s a lot of humor and heart along the way, too,” says HBO drama programming head Francesca Orsi.

“The show is meant to be a very different type,” says Martin, who serves as co-creator and exec producer. “It turned out very well, and I’m very happy with season one. The casting was a home run. [Showrunner Ira Parker] is terrific and seems to have the same priorities I do — he’s trying to do something that’s very true to the characters.”

The show came about, Martin says, because HBO was looking for a project “where we could get the budget a little under control.” (Dragon costs about $20 million an episode, and the network previously shortened Dragon‘s second season to push an expensive battle sequence into season three.)

“This doesn’t have any dragons or big battles,” says Martin. “It has a field and a lot of tents and some horses.”

When the project was announced two years ago, HBO’s press release suggested the series would serve as Martin’s return to screenwriting. But he still hasn’t written an episode of TV since season four of Thrones. “There has always been the possibility of me writing on the show,” he says. “But then things happen and suddenly I have other priorities.”

Martin is nonetheless highly creatively involved. On Knight and Dragon, Martin initially convened a writing summit in Santa Fe to help figure out the series. “I bring the showrunner together with four or five writers that I know — some are TV writers, some are fantasy novelists — who really know the world and we assemble for a week,” he says. Parker called the summit “one of the most fun, creative weeks I’ve ever had in my whole career” and notes that while writing episodes, “George was there every step of the way. He’s been lovely. I think of him as a friend now.”

With a production and scope that’s quite modest compared to Thrones and Dragon, Parker admits to worrying about whether fans will embrace it (early reviews, at least, are quite positive, with our critic calling the show “smaller, smarter, funnier” than its predecessors.).

“At the end of the day, we are Game of Thrones without all the stuff,” Parker says. “We have one of the ingredients — two unusual characters like Arya and the Hound, or Brienne and Podrick — who are paired together and having conversions. I hope that’s what [made Thrones work]. It’s a big part of what it was for me.” 

Season one is faithful to Martin’s debut Dunk and Egg tale, The Hedge Knight, and season two, which already has been greenlit, will be based on his novella The Sworn Sword.

There is, however, one potential problem for the show’s future. “The big issue is that I have only written three novellas, and I have a lot more stories about Dunk and Egg in my fucking head,” Martin says, looking a bit shamefaced. “I’ve got to get them down on paper. I began writing two at various points in the past year. One is set in Winterfell and one set in the Riverlands …”

Oh, George, I say. Not again …

(3) ILLICIT REASONS APPEAL MORE TO POTENTIAL READERS THAN VIRTUOUS ONES. In the view of The Atlantic’s Adam Kirsch, “Reading Is a Vice”. Link bypasses the paywall.

…Telling someone to love literature because reading is good for society is like telling someone to believe in God because religion is good for society. It’s a utilitarian argument for what should be a personal passion.

It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice. This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.

One of my strongest early memories of reading comes from fifth grade, when I was so engrossed in a book that I read right through a spelling test without noticing it was happening. I remember this incident partly because I was afraid I would get in trouble. But I think the real reason it stays in my memory after 40 years was the feeling of uncanniness. The time that had passed in the classroom had not passed for me; in a real sense I was in another world, the world of the book.

Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive. Reading is not profitable; it doesn’t teach you any transferable skills or offer any networking opportunities. On the contrary, it is an antisocial activity in the most concrete sense: To do it you have to be alone, or else pretend you’re alone by tuning out other people. Reading teaches you to be more interested in what’s going on inside your head than in the real world….

(4) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books of Joshua Tree, CA has released Simultaneous Times Episode 95. Stories featured in this episode:

  • “DNR Motorcycle Club for Seniors” by Mark Soden, Jr.; with music by Phog Masheeen; read by the author.
  • “Supper’s Ready” by Jean-Paul L. Garnier; with music by TSG; read by the author

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

(5) KGB. Ellen Datlow has shared her photos from the January 14, 2026 session of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB readers series.

Robert Ottone and Rachel Harrison read from their recent work to a very full and enthusiastic house.

(6) ANDREW FOX WINS INAUGURAL ARK PRIZE. Ark Press announced January 12 that Andrew Fox is the winner of the 2026 Ark Prize for his novel Ghostlands. As the winner of the Ark Prize, Fox receives a publishing contract with Ark Press and a $10,000 advance. Ghostlands was chosen from more than one hundred submissions. 

Ark Press also selected three novels for Ark Prize 2026 Honorable Mentions: 

  • Centennial by Robert E. Hampson
  • Independence ’76 by Matt Harlow
  • Shrine by Graham Bradley

The theme of the contest—America 2076—challenged authors to complete a novel-length manuscript. “We received a wide range of outstanding entries, from urban fantasy to time-travel science fiction,” said Ark Press editor in chief Tony Daniel. “In the end, Ghostlands blew us away.” 

Ghostlands blends surreal science fiction and dark adventure, following a groundskeeper in a time-haunted future who learns he may be the key to stopping humanity’s war on its own past.

Ghostlands is scheduled for publication by Ark Press in September 2026.

“I wrote Ghostlands as a graphic depiction of the persistence and tenacity of the past,” said author Andrew Fox. “Fatherhood has been the toughest—but also by far most rewarding—job I ever signed up for. For many men, becoming a father is the most meaningful experience of their lives. It can also be the most painful, but that doesn’t distract from its meaningfulness.”

The novel has already drawn high praise from Gordon Van Gelder, award-winning editor-at-large of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. “Ghostlands has the same sort of wild, anything-goes imaginative freedom that first drew me to science fiction through the works of R. A. Lafferty, Philip K. Dick, and Neal Barrett, Jr.,” said Van Gelder. “It has been years since I’ve encountered anything remotely like Andrew Fox’s novel.”

(7) TRAILER PARK: SOME SERIOUS SH**. [Item by N.] Canadian cult TV comedy Nirvanna The Band The Show gets a big-screen installment in theaters February 13. Time travel shenanigans ensue.

(8) TRAILER PARK: SHE’S ALIVE! [Item by N.] Seeking more takes on Frankenstein? Jessie Buckley plays the title character in director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, in theaters March 6.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

January 15, 1944 — Christopher Stasheff. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: I discovered Christopher Stasheff’s work by complete accident, by mistaking his work for another author’s work. A bit of inattention on my part in a B Dalton (remember those) was the issue.  At the time in the 90’s, I was avidly reading the Soprano Sorceress books by L E Modesitt. Although I am terrible at appreciating music, I had branched from Modesitt’s Recluce novels into some of his other work and Soprano Sorceress was the series of his I was working on at the time. (More on Modesitt, perhaps, another time)

Christopher Stasheff

The SF selection in this particular store was small. But, since there was not yet a Barnes and Noble on Staten Island, and going to “the city” took more effort and time, I made do with B Dalton a lot. Although, parenthetically, when I went to the city to bookshop, I would go to the Barnes and Noble on 14th Street in Union Square and bop my way down and hit a number of other bookstores and come back with lots of books. But still, that was a special treat and I usually just went to B Dalton in the S.I. Mall.

So, back to B Dalton. I casually was looking around and saw A Wizard in Rhyme. I looked at the back cover, figured it was part of the same ‘verse, with rhyming poetry instead of music, grabbed it, along with a couple of other books, thinking it must be Modesitt and didn’t realize until I was feet out of the B Dalton and into the mall that I had bought a completely different author than I expected.  A Wizard in Rhyme was not in fact the latest Modesitt Soprano novel but rather something from Christopher Stasheff.  Oops. 

And wizard Matt’s story is portal fantasy all the way.  (I would later try Magic Kingdom for Sale —Sold! by Goodkind hoping it had the same magic for me).  Anyway, I was enchanted by a book where poetry was magic, especially because I HAD read The Incompleat Enchanter by that point and grokked the idea rather well. I ran through the Rhyme series and really liked how he not only introduced new characters but developed an entire family and overarching world for what was at first really a simple beginning.  

Speaking of Incompleat Enchanter, I did also read Stasheff’s co-written (ghost written) sequels to De Camp and Pratt’s Incompleat Enchanter. I found the sequels not quite as good as the first, although Arms and the Enchanter (where they wind up in the Aeneid) is quite fun.  The foreword in one of those books makes it clear that Wizard in Rhyme, if I could not guess already, was completely a response to The Incompleat Enchanter. 

But the Warlock in Spite of Himself series was even better in building up a world than the and it also scratches my itch for Science Fantasy. That series involved an interstellar agent who winds up on a planet and is mistaken for a warlock. He insists he is not, he’s a man of science, a man of action. But one man’s space traveler is another man’s wizard.  (This is a lesson that Adrian Tchaikovsky has reinforced lately, in Elder Race). But in the course of the novel, he has to concede that there is indeed magic on the planet, and that he can wield it…and has to, for the good of the realm.  The following books give him a wife, adventures in time and space, children who grow up to adventures of their own, and much more.  

The Starship Troupers stories, about a company of players who wind up wandering the solar system with their theater act are playful and fun. Those really are the watchwords for his work, playful and fun. His books are relatively unserious, but they are readable, and fun.  The Star Stone series by him is much more serious–and I didn’t find that they worked for me as well, for it. The Gods of War series which he created does capture some of that magic, as well as his Silverberg Time Gate story “The Simulated Golem”. That one really gets to the whole theme of the series about resurrecting historical characters as AIs (which hits very differently these days in the age of LLMs).

It’s a pity almost none of his work is available in audiobook, my preferred way to re-read work these days. And not all of it is even in ebook.  I’d like to revisit them sometime. I never got to meet Stasheff, alas.  Requiescat in pace.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) OCTOTHORPE. In Episode 151 of the Octothorpe podcast, “Only Ding-Dong for Good and Not for Evil”, John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty —

Three lions photographed on a safari in Kenya, with glasses photoshopped onto two of them to make them look very slightly more like John and Alison. The top has words reading “Octothorpe 151” and the bottom has words reading “Definitely not about the cricket”. It is unclear why, because John edited all the cricket out.

…Emerge blinking into the sunlight of 2026 and we have a full mail bag! We discuss the Montreal 2027 org chart and René Walling’s role at Montreal, as well as recent Hugo how-to guides from Renay and Molly Templeton.

There’s an uncorrected transcript here.

(12) MONTRÉAL WORLDCON COMMITTEE CHART. Here is a link to the Montréal 2027 Org Chart that Octothorpe shared.

(13) SPRING 2026 SF2 CONCATENATION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Spring issue of SF2 Concatenation is up. Here are links to the many good things therein.

v36(1) 2026.1.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Spring 2026

v36(1) 2026.1.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v36(1) 2026.1.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

(14) RYAN GEORGE IS BACK MAKING VIDEOS. “The First Guy To Ever Measure Time”.

(15) TODAY’S TITLE EXPLICATION. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “Anything You Can Scroll, I Can Scroll Better” is via (of course), Irving Berlin’s song from Annie Get Your Gun, “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)”, first performed by Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton.

The Wikipedia page (above) lists numerous well-known performances; one of my favorites is Barbra Streisand and Melissa McCarthy perform the duet as part of Streisand’s 2016 album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway: “Anything You Can Do (Official Video) ft. Melissa McCarthy”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, John A Arkansawyer, Michael J. Walsh, Dann, N., 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 Daniel Dern.]

Must Reads Magazines Statement on Changes Made to Standard Contract in Response to SFWA

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Must Reads Magazines, publisher of Analog, Asimov’s and F&SF, has been working for several months with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association on issues SFWA raised about MRM’s standard contract (“boilerplate”) language.

MRM announced January 14 that now they have incorporated versions of SFWA’s recommended changes and additions to the boilerplates for these magazines. However, they have not changed a “phrase in the warranties and indemnities paragraph required by their insurance.”

SFWA made public comment about the issues they had raised about Must Read Magazines’ contract language in a July 23, 2025 press release: (1) moral rights, (2) merchandising rights, and (3) author’s termination and rights reversion.

  • Moral Rights: Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware® explained the concept: “[T]here are two main reasons why publishers and others might want to demand a [moral rights] waiver: they may wish to ensure that they and their affiliates and licensees don’t have to identify the author every time the work is reprinted or adapted (especially where the contract grants multiple subsidiary rights); and they may want the ability to make changes or adaptations without having to seek permission or deal with the possibility that the author might object.” SFWA said the problem is that, “Practically, this means that the author loses control over their work and sometimes loses attribution of their work, among other impacts.”
  • Merchandising Rights. SFWA’s notes regarding merchandising rights observed that many magazine publishers do not actively exercise those rights. They recommended that merchandising clauses not be included unless the publisher is actively exercising those rights.
  • Author’s Termination: SFWA’s Contracts Committee said that in respect to termination and rights reversion, the sample contracts they reviewed too heavily favored the publisher.

Here is Must Reads Magazine’s official statement:

Recently, Must Read Magazines was contacted by SFWA regarding the contracts offered to writers for Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction and F&SF to go over concerns raised by SFWA members. When the magazines first came under new ownership, the boilerplates had been modified to reflect insurance requirements and new distribution channels: a return to translated editions of the magazines, a new online presence, and a web archive.

After conversing with SFWA President Kate Ristau and reviewing the recommendations of SFWA’s contracts committee, staff, and SFWA’s legal counsel, Must Read Magazines incorporated versions of the recommended changes and additions to the boilerplates for these magazines.  Aside from a phrase in the warranties and indemnities paragraph required by their insurance, Must Reads Magazines revised the boilerplates to address SFWA’s recommended changes and additions to meet authors’ concerns. 

Changes include the complete deletion of a waiver of moral rights and a reversion if a story is not published by the magazines within a reasonable timeline. The company also agreed to make the grant of certain merchandise rights from authors more explicitly optional.

“SFWA recognizes these magazines as important and historical repositories of some of the best speculative fiction written, and I was personally happy to read the newest issue of F&SF,” said SFWA President Kate Ristau. “While SFWA cannot and does not negotiate on behalf of individual writers, our goal is to advocate and provide resources to support and protect all SFF writers to the best of our ability. We thank and recognize the writers who are pushing hard for good contracts and a better speculative fiction industry. We look forward to reading their upcoming work. No matter who is publishing our work, SFWA recommends writers always read their contracts carefully.”

Russell Davis, Operations Director of SFWA says, “For many years, SFWA has served as a driving force for writer advocacy and defense, and we take that responsibility seriously—so thank you for continuing to engage with us to improve this agreement.”

Group publisher P.L. Stevens adds, “We are grateful to the authors who gave us the opportunity to help correct unintended issues in our new boilerplates. We look forward to working happily with readers and authors for many years to come.”

Must Reads Magazines also announced:

Our first issue of F&SF (Volume 1) is also now on select newsstands across North America including in every Barnes & Noble in the US and every Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada. The magazine is also available for subscription in print or digitally direct to consumer on http://analogsf.com, or readers can subscribe to our digital editions across most major online retailers.

[Based on press releases.]

2026 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award Contest Opens 1/20

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Entries for the thirteenth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest will be taken beginning January 20 at 12:01 a.m. Eastern through April 30th, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Full guidelines at the link.

The winners will be officially announced during the Baen Traveling Roadshow at Dragon Con, which is scheduled for September 3-7, 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Each entry is limited to an original short story in the English language of no more than 8,000 words, and only one entry per author. Complete guidelines here. Entries will be judged by Baen editors

  • The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at industry-standard rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive an engraved award and a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
  • SECOND place winner will receive a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
  • THIRD place winner will receive a prize package containing $300 of free Baen Books.

Finalists will be announced no later than July 1, 2026.

Winners will be notified no later than July 21, 2026.

Since its beginning the contest has received thousands of entries of fantasy stories from all over the globe.

2026 VES Awards Nominees

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The Visual Effects Society released the nominations for the 2026 VES Awards on January 13, encompassing 25 categories across film, television, special venue projects, technological innovation, student projects, and more.

The VES Awards will be held on February 25 in Los Angeles.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is this year’s most-nominated project with ten nominations, including the key category of Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature.

Among animated contenders there is a three-way tie for the lead in nominations – with KPop Demon Hunters, Elio, and Zootopia 2 each receiving five nominations.

Atop the episodic field are Stranger Things, The Last of Us, and Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, with four nominations each.

This year’s special honorees will include acclaimed film producer Jerry Bruckheimer receiving the VES Lifetime Achievement Award, and Wētā Workshop co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Sir Richard Taylor receiving the VES Visionary Award.

The complete list of nominees for the 24th Annual VES Awards follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 1/14/26 Legs Like A Gazelle, Thighs Like Tugboats, X-Ray Eyes, Bionic Blood

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(1) FANTASY INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING. Stephen Granade recommends this ”AO3 fic in which Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’”. “Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death” by Charlotte Stant at Archive of One’s Own. One reader compared it to “Why don’t we just kill the kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim.

Clarence Summers has a day job in the energy industry, but he considers his vocation to be the administration of Buell’s prosperity lottery. The lottery sees one Buell resident stoned to death each summer, following a randomized selection process that Summers facilitates. Buell’s residents believe the lottery protects them from evil and confers good fortune upon the town. 

I recently spoke by phone with Summers. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why he thinks the lottery is justified, evolving attitudes toward stoning, and what protections the state owes to children….

(2) THE MEAT IN A WESTEROS SANDWICH. Gizmodo’s Cheryl Eddy says “’A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Is an Absolute Triumph”.

 A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premieres January 18, is cut from a different cloth. A rougher, stinkier cloth. It’s an approach that perfectly suits the source material, George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas—and it makes for a wonderfully entertaining TV show that explores Westeros from an entirely new point of view….

…As A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms explores over its six episodes (all of which io9 was able to view for review), being a knight—sworn by oath to “protect the innocent”—and being an honorable man are not always the same thing. In fact, as the unintentionally blundering Ser Dunk discovers, there’s often a deep divide between the two. Even worse, the people with the most power can sometimes be the most despicable of them all, a timeless lesson that Dunk learns in the hardest way possible….

…But the stakes are still sky-high. They’re life or death both in the jousting ring, where men compete knowing the considerable risks, and also in the rowdy camp that springs up around the tourney. There, Duncan sees firsthand what an angry, impulsive, bratty Targaryen prince is capable of—bolstered by the confidence that comes with being above the law simply because of who his family is.

House of the Dragon fans are well familiar with that signature Targaryen trait, but you don’t need to have seen that show or even Game of Thrones to enjoy A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Previous Westeros know-how is a bonus, since you’ll recognize certain names and have a working familiarity with the kingdom and its tumultuous history. But with Dunk—an unconventional, immediately likable protagonist—as its entry point, the perspective here is much more immediate and intimate….

(3) GALLIFREY ONE NEWS. After an absence of 13 years, Gallifrey One welcomes back Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) as their final major guest confirmation for next month’s convention, February 6-8, 2026 in Los Angeles.

Ms. Agyeman will appear on Friday and Saturday this year, in an appearance sponsored by Showmasters Events. She joins Peter Davison, Millie Gibson, Jo Martin, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Matthew Waterhouse, Daphne Ashbrook, Yee Jee Tso, Frazer Hines and many more guests attending the event this year.

Full information at the Gallifrey One website.

(4) MARTINA RADWAN Q&A. “’Stranger Things’ Documentary Director Answers Burning Questions” for The Hollywood Reporter.

I learned a lot from watching Martina Radwan’s Stranger Things documentary, One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, which is currently streaming on Netflix. (OK, so I learned five things.) I learned even more from speaking with the filmmaker herself….

You’ve got super fans pausing and zooming in on individuals frames of your documentary. One allegedly shows one of the Duffers with a ChatGPT tab open on their computer. Did they use ChatGPT in your presence, and if so, what for?

I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?

I’m personally not, but the internet seems sure.

Well, there’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, “We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.” But to me it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?

I do.

How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand.

I don’t think many fans truly believe the Duffers had gen-AI write their scripts, I think it’s more of an aversion to the use of the technology in general in Hollywood.

Again, first of all, nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools … while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time. What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart.

So just to button-up the topic: You didn’t witness an unethical use of generative-AI in the writers room?

No, of course not. I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation. People think “writers room” means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development. And, of course, you go places in your creative mind and then you come back [to the script]. I think being in the writers room is such a privilege and such a gift to be able to witness that.

(5) ALAN RICKMAN MEMORIES. [Item by Steven French.] Some lovely anecdotes here about Alan Rickman who died ten years ago, including Sigourney Weaver on proposing the sequel to Galaxy Quest and this one from Tom Felton who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies (in which Rickman was of course Severus Snape: “’I fell in love with him on the spot’: Alan Rickman remembered, 10 years after his death” in the Guardian.

…He could have had his food delivered to his trailer, like most of the cast (including me). Instead, he queued up for his own breakfast and lunch, head to toe in his Snape costume and wig, holding a plastic tray and waiting his turn in the usually very long line behind a carpenter, set decorator, burly cameraman and Gringotts goblin – an image I will never forget. I didn’t realise it then, but I think now Alan’s silent message was: “We’re all in this together. Equally.”…

(6) NERO BOOK AWARDS. The 2025 Nero Book Awards were announced today. The award is for the best books of the year from writers based in the UK and Ireland.  All the winners are non-genre works.

  • Fiction winner – Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)
  • Non-Fiction winner – Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape)
  • Debut Fiction winner – A Family Matter by Claire Lynch (Chatto & Windus)
  • Children’s Fiction winner – My Soul, A Shining Tree by Jamila Gavin (Farshore) 

Each winner receives £5,000 and is now in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year 2025. The winner will be selected by a final judging panel led by bestselling author Nick Hornby, best known for his memoir, Fever Pitch and his novel, About a Boy, both of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby will be joined by BBC correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti, a regular presenter on BBC News. Completing the panel is the screenwriter Daisy Goodwin, the New York Times bestselling novelist and creator of the ITV show Victoria. They will decide the overall winner carrying a further £30,000, which will be announced at a ceremony hosted by Sarah Montague on 4th March.

The Nero book awards, run by Caffè Nero, were launched in 2023 after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book awards in June 2022.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 14, 1949 — Lawrence Kasdan, 77.

Lawrence Kasdan did the screenplay for my favorite all-time genre film, Raiders of the Lost Ark which would win a Hugo at Chicon V. And no, the Suck Fairy had not had any impact upon my appreciation of it which if anything has strengthened down the decades. 

Lawrence Kasdan

Speaking of being involved in my favorite films, his first work was as screenwriter (with the late Leigh Brackett, and George Lucas) for the oh so perfect The Empire Strikes Back which, yes, also won a Hugo, this time at Denvention Two. It and Star Wars are my go to Star Wars films for watching over and over. (I refuse to use the revisionist names for these films.) And he wrote the screenplay for Return of the Jedi.

He also wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Solo: A Star Wars Story but I’ll confess that I stopped watching the Star Wars films after the original trilogy. There’s later material I like, say the animated series, but the later films just don’t interest me.

Finally Dreamcatcher is a horror SF film based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. It’s directed by Lawrence Kasdan and co-written by him and screenwriter William Goldman of The Princess Bride fame.

Pinewood Studios, UK – Writer/Director/Producer J.J Abrams (top center right) at the cast read-through of Star Wars Episode VII at Pinewood Studios with (clockwise from right) Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Producer Bryan Burk, Lucasfilm President and Producer Kathleen Kennedy, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Andy Serkis, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Writer Lawrence Kasdan. Copyright and Photo Credit: David James.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) TIG NOTARO Q&A. From Jimmy Kimmel Live: “Tig Notaro on Telling Tom Cruise She Looks Like Him, Star Trek Float with George Takei & Documentary”.

Tig talks about her new tour, being on “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” being on a Star Trek float with George Takei in the Rose Parade, her new documentary Come See Me in the Good Light about her good friend Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson who had stage four ovarian cancer, and going up to Tom Cruise at the Governors Awards to tell him that she looks like him.

(10) STREAMING INDUSTRY MARKET REPORT. JustWatch  today released its latest report on the US streaming industry, following changes in the market throughout 2025.

Key Takeaways:

  • New US market leader: Netflix (20%) overtook Prime Video (19%) in the last quarter of 2025, according to data released by JustWatch
  • Increasing competition in the SVOD market: Netflix and Prime Video still lead the U.S. market, but both lost ground to mid-tier platforms in 2025. Netflix declined by 1 pp year-over-year, while Prime Video fell by 3 pp.
  • Biggest winners of 2025: Disney+ (14%), Apple TV+ (9%), and other services (5%) each gained 2 pp over the year. Disney+ is now the third-largest SVOD platform by market share in the U.S., according to JustWatch data.

Market Development Snapshot

SVOD Market Shares in Q4 2025

The top two leaders in streaming this quarter are:

  • Netflix – 20%
  • Amazon Prime Video – 19%

Followed by Disney+ (14%), HBO Max (13%), and Hulu (12%), Apple TV+ (9%), Paramount+ (5%), Peacock Premium (2%), Starz (1%), and other services (5%).

Market Development Overview

Netflix (20%) and Prime Video (19%)

●       Quarterly development (Q3 → Q4 2025): Prime Video lost 1 pp this quarter, while Netflix gained 1 pp.

●       Annual development (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025): Both Netflix and Prime Video lost traction over the year (-1 pp and -3 pp respectively).

  • Market context: Netflix had a strong quarter across both movies and series, with exclusives such as Frankenstein and Stranger Things topping the weekly JustWatch U.S. Streaming Charts. Competition from mid-market platforms also intensified, with Disney+ and Apple TV+ each gaining +2 pp in 2025. 

Disney+ (14%) and Hulu (12%)

  • Quarterly development (Q3 → Q4 2025): Disney+ remained stable in Q4, while Hulu gained 1 pp with steady growth from October through December.
  • Annual Development (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025): Disney+ grew 2 pp in 2025, one of the largest year-over-year increases, alongside Apple TV+. It surpassed HBO Max in March to become the third-largest streaming service in the US, according to JustWatch Data. Hulu gained 1 pp, making it fifth largest, trailing close behind HBO Max. 
  • Market context: Disney+ and Hulu performed strongly in 2025 on the strength of exclusive series such as Alien: Earth and Andor, alongside major releases like Lilo & Stitch (2025). In Q4, both services appeared less frequently in the JustWatch Streaming Charts. Meanwhile, Disney’s theatrical slate gained momentum with Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash.

HBO Max (13%) and Apple TV+ (9%)

●       Quarterly development (Q3 → Q4 2025): HBO Max held its place this quarter and remained steady at 13%. Apple TV+ gained 1 pp.

●       Annual development (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025): HBO Max retained its base in 2025, however, it lost its top three position to Disney+ in Q2. Apple TV+ saw an increase of 2 pp, as the platform grew in mainstream popularity in 2025.

  • Market context: Both Apple TV+ and HBO Max performed strongly in terms of title popularity in 2025, according to the JustWatch Streaming Charts. Apple TV+’s top-performing titles included Severance, and in Q4, Pluribus also ranked highly. HBO Max likewise saw strong engagement across both movies and series, led by The Last of Us as its most popular title of the year, alongside films such as Sinners.

Paramount+ (5%), Peacock Premium (2%), Starz (1%), and Other Platforms (5%)

  • Quarterly development (Q3 → Q4 2025): Paramount+ lost 1 pp from Q3 to Q4, as some of its main competitors pulled ahead. Peacock Premium and Starz remained stable, while other platforms grew by 1 pp.
  • Annual development (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025): Paramount+ saw an annual decrease of 4 pp from 2024 to 2025. Peacock Premium grew 1 pp, while Starz remained stable. Other platforms saw a decrease of 2 pp in 2025. 
  • Market context: Paramount+ saw some volatility early in the year, potentially linked to the conclusion of Yellowstone, which aired its series finale in late 2024. However, the platform also saw strong performance from certain exclusive titles, including MobLand, South Park, and its release of The Naked Gun, as per JustWatch’s Streaming Charts.

(11) IT’S A WRAP. ScreenRant introduces “The Mummy 2026 Trailer: Horror Franchise Returns With Gory Twist”.

…Though its 63-second runtime has Blumhouse and New Line Cinema keeping much of it a secret, The Mummy trailer certainly offers a lot of insight into what’s to come from the film. For starters, Cronin has once again made a film centered around a family encountering evil forces that threaten to tear them apart, having done so with both his feature directorial debut The Hole in the Ground and his critical and commercial hit Evil Dead Rise.

The new Mummy, however, also takes a big swing with its family dynamic compared to his prior films and the franchise itself by seemingly making its titular entity that of a child. As seen in the trailer, the daughter of Reynor’s character, Katie, goes missing for eight years and is later found in the sarcophagus being opened in the footage, albeit seemingly with some physical deformations….

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Today’s title is inspired by Kenny Everett’s song “Captain Kremmen” – complete lyrics at the link. Character’s history in the Wikipedia: “Captain Kremmen”.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/13/26 A Filer’s Full House: Two Scrolls And Three Pixels

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(1) RINGMASTER. Abigail Nussbaum continues “The Great Tolkien Reread: The Shadow of the Past” at Asking the Wrong Questions.

…It is not simply that two of the most quotable passages in the novel—“I wish it need not have happened in my time” and “do not be so eager to deal out death in judgment”—appear in this chapter, barely fifty pages into the story and before the journeying and adventuring have even begun. Every idea that ends up playing into the conclusion of the quest to destroy the Ring is spelled out in these pages: that Frodo may conceal the Ring and refrain from using it, but is incapable of giving it up or making a direct effort to destroy it; that Gollum is drawn to the Ring; that both the Ring itself and Sauron are acting to effect their reunion; that some force put the Ring in Bilbo and then Frodo’s path in order to prevent this; and that Gollum has some role to play in that force’s plans.

A reader coming to the novel for the first time will most likely not be able to see the outcome that these separate facts are all pointing towards, but nevertheless the shape of the novel’s conclusion has been laid out….

(2) BESPOKE FLUKES. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] Aside from the fantasy cosplay angle, I just love the photograph at the top of the article. “Meet the merpeople: ‘Once I put the tail on, my life was changed forever’ | Swimming | The Guardian in the Guardian.

Propelled by a shimmering silicon tail, Katrin Gray spins underwater, blowing kisses to the audience as her long, copper hair floats around her face. Her seemingly effortless movement is anything but – a professional mermaid’s free diving and performance skills require training, practice and total concentration.

Mermaiding has become a global cottage industry, with pageants, conventions, retreats and meet-ups, where people gather in “pods” to practise their dolphin kicks. Makers create bespoke tail flukes, bejewelled bras, mermaid hair and even prosthetic gills for professional and hobbyist “seasters”. There is even a Netflix reality series called MerPeople, which documents the occasionally perilous journey of several aspiring professional merfolk. “No dead mermaids” is the motto of one business featured.

Gray, who goes by Mermaid Kat, is an industry veteran. While working as a scuba diving instructor in Phuket, a childhood obsession with Disney’s Little Mermaid led to her asking a wetsuit maker to fashion a cover for her monofin.

“Phuket is quite a small island and it didn’t take too long for people to notice a crazy girl swimming around in a mermaid tail,” she says. People asked her to perform at birthday parties and public events, and soon after she was working as a mermaid full-time. “It just took off.”

In 2012, Gray founded the world’s first mermaid school. Since then, more than 12,000 students have attended her classes and workshops in Germany, Thailand and Australia….

(3) OUR RADIOACTIVE NEIGHBORS. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination today announced the publication of Our Radioactive Neighbors: Collaborative Imagination, Community Futures, and Nuclear Siting Practices, a book of speculative fiction, essays, and art that aims to help communities consider the complexities and decisions around the potential siting of nuclear waste storage facilities.

The book was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that was awarded back in 2023; more information about the larger research and community engagement project of which the book is part is available at https://3c.cspo.org/about.

Our Radioactive Neighbors features, among other things, original short stories by Andrew Dana Hudson, Justina Ireland, Carter Meland, and Sarena Ulibarri. It’s free to read and download across a variety of digital format, or folks can order print-on-demand hard copies at cost (currently, $12.48).

You’ll find a more thorough description and full list of contributors at the link above. Also available at that link are previews of the four artworks created for the book by Dwayne Manuel, plus an extensive facilitation guide with activities, discussion questions, and other resources for using the book in classrooms, community meetings, reading groups, library activities, and the like.

 (4) CLASSIC BIT OF SOCIAL SF ON BBC RADIO 4. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The BBC has aired a neat ten-minute documentary on the War of the Worlds broadcast that shook America. (Actually it was a repeat of a 2025 episode of Witness History.)  Originally, they – the US broadcasters — planned a straight radio play adaptation of Wells’ story and this was written.  But come the broadcast, the show’s director binned it as too boring.  That was when they had the idea of re-setting it in then present-day US America…  The rest, as they say, is history.  The documentary includes a clip of an interview with Orson Wells himself.

The night before Halloween in 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air performed a radio adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds. It would become one of the most notorious radio broadcasts in history. In their own words, from the BBC’s archive, Orson Welles, producer John Houseman and writer Howard Koch describe how it was “a very boring show” until they had the idea to update the science fiction story, using reportage and the name of a real location in New Jersey in the United States, as the scene for where aliens from Mars would invade. Up to six million people tuned in, most of whom had no idea that what they were listening to was fictional. It prompted mass panic. Orson Welles delights in recalling “Suddenly everyone started driving at 125 miles per hour,” saying, “I’m going to the hills”.

You can access the programme here.

Or alternatively download here.

A BBC subscription may be required.

(5) BBC PROFILES STEPHEN KING. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Stephen King was the subject of BBC Radio 4’s 45 minute cinema arts show Screenshot. “Stephen King”,

Fifty years on from the release of the film Carrie, directed by Brian DePalma and based on the first novel by Stephen King, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode look at King adaptations on screen, from The Shawshank Redemption to The Shining. Why is the work of the modern horror maestro so often adapted? And what is the best ever Stephen King adaptation?

Ellen hears from US critic and writer Maitland McDonagh, who has been a front-row witness to King on screen for five decades, about her favourite adaptations of his work – from Misery to The Monkey.

And Ellen speaks to Edgar Wright – the director of Shaun Of The Dead, Baby Driver and the most recent King adaptation to reach cinema screens – The Running Man.

Meanwhile, Mark talks to Mike Flanagan – the filmmaker who, perhaps more than any other in recent years, has helped keep King’s work vividly alive on screen, with adaptations of Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck and a forthcoming new take on Carrie.

BBC subscription required.

(6) TRAILER PARK. Here’s another in the series of Avengers: Doomsday teasers. In theaters December 18.

(7) ONE OF SFF’S FOUNDING FAMILIES. Fanac.org has posted the first part of the fanhistory Zoom about “Astrid Anderson Bear, and the Family that Built Worlds, w/ interviewer Joe Siclari (Pt 1 of 2)”.

If ever anyone was born into fandom, it was Astrid Anderson Bear. As the child of Poul & Karen Anderson, two of fandom and indeed, science fiction’s best, Astrid grew up with fans and pros, conventions and fan activity as her “normal”. It never ended: she married Greg Bear, a fan, a pro, an artist and writer all-in-one, and stayed true to her roots. In part 1, we learn what it was like to grow up in one of the best known families in science fiction. Astrid attended her first Worldcon at the age of 6 weeks, was present at the very first meeting of the Society of Creative Anachronism, and was a central figure in the first masquerade costume to come with a plot and pre-recorded soundtrack (at the 1969 Worldcon in St. Louis). Unsurprisingly, Astrid became a fan. Her family stories are full of familiar names – Jack Vance, Alva Rogers, Reginald Bretnor, Tony Boucher, Diana Paxson, and evocative anecdotes like that of the Bootleg Bookseller. Astrid pubbed her ish, was active in costuming and was part of the SFCon70 committee. In the early 80s, she married Greg Bear, himself a founding father of ComicCon. From the invention of the word “filk”, to fanzines and costuming, to the social fannish whirl of the Bay Area in the last part of the 20th century, and the beginning of the SCA, Astrid Anderson Bear and her family have been at the center of a pivotal time in the history of fandom. The interview continues with part 2.

(8) SCOTT ADAMS (1957-2026). Dilbert creator Scott Adams died January 13 reports Deadline: “Scott Adams Dead: Controversial ‘Dilbert’ Cartoonist Was 68”. Adams announced in May that he had aggressive prostate cancer and that he probably had only a few months to live.

…At its peak, Dilbert, was published in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries, according to reports. But in 2023 its syndicator said that it was dropping the comic strip following racist remarks made by Adams. The publisher of Adams’ non-Dilbert books also has terminated an upcoming project, according to The Wall Street Journal. Adams wrote on then-Twitter that the publisher also canceled his backlist…

…Dilbert, which poked fun at office humor by following the workplace indignities of put-upon engineer Dilbert, was first published in 1989 and spawned numerable books, games, merchandise and in 1999 a two-season UPN animated comedy series….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

January 13, 1977 — Orlando Bloom, 49.

Speaking of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, let’s talk about Orlando Bloom who I think magnificently played Legolas. Mind you this is one of the reasons I didn’t watch The Hobbit films as he wasn’t in the novel, was he? 

So what else for genre work? Well there’s being Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. I’ve seen just the first but I immensely enjoyed it and thought he was quite good in it. 

Orlando Bloom

Carnival Row which sounds like someone read Bill Willingham’s Fables and crossed it with a police procedural has him as Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate, an inspector of a Constabulary. It’s on Amazon, it’s well worth watching. 

He was the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers. Yes, I consider it genre. Really I do. 

He was Tommy Hambleton was in Needle in a Timestack, script by John Ridley from the Robert Silverberg story which first was published  in the June 1983 issue of Playboy.

He has a single mystery to his name, a Midsomer Murders, “Judgement Day” in which he plays Peter Drinkwater, a petty thief who gets murdered. I mention this because acting on that series is a coveted affair indeed in Britain. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) DOOM CALLING. This April, Doctor Doom of 2099 strikes back!

 Following his return in last year’s Doomed 2099 one-shot, Doom 2099’s next chapter, DOOM 2099: RAGE OF DOOM #1, arrives in April. The one-shot will be written by acclaimed writer Frank Tieri, returning to continue the epic saga he set in motion in Doomed 2099, this time alongside rising star artist Von Randal (All-New Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider). The infamous future version of Doctor Doom, who experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to his role in Marvel Rivals, embarked on a startling journey to the present in Doomed 2099—only to return to his future humbled by his past self! Having lost everything, his only hope to reverse his cruel fate and reconquer his destiny lies in the megalomaniacal machine known as ULTRON!

ULTRON VS. DOOM!

Doctor Doom’s spell didn’t just annihilate his enemies – it wiped out all life on Earth, leaving even him to regret the cost. In the desolate future of DOOMED 2099, Doom discovers Ultron’s buried head and risks everything to repair his time machine. But awakening a dangerously powerful machine intelligence invites new rebellion, and the path to redemption may demand a price even Doom never anticipated.

Cover by JUNGGEUN YOON. Variant Cover by DERRICK CHEW. Variant Cover by PEACH MOMOKO.

Variant Cover by DERRICK CHEW
Variant Cover by PEACH MOMOKO
Cover by JUNGGEUN YOON

(12) PURR! “A Cat Left Paw Prints on the Pages of This Medieval Manuscript When the Ink Was Drying 500 Years Ago” recalls Smithsonian.

More than 500 years ago, after dedicating hours to the meticulous transcription of a crucial manuscript, a Flemish scribe set the parchment out to dry—only to later return and discover the page smeared, filled with inky paw prints.

Perhaps the world’s first known instance of a so-called “keyboard cat,” that manuscript is the inspiration for and centerpiece of an exhibition currently on display at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. Running through late February, “Paws on Parchment” explores the roles of cats in the Middle Ages—and the myriad ways humans showed affection for their feline friends hundreds of years ago.

“Objects like [the manuscript] have a way of bridging across time, as it’s just so relatable for anyone who has ever had a cat,” Lynley Anne Herbert, the museum’s curator of rare books and manuscripts, tells Artnet’s Margaret Carrigan. “Many medieval people loved their cats just as much as we do.”…

(13) FLY ME TO A MOON. “Flight Engineers Give NASA’s Dragonfly Lift” reports NASA.

In sending a car-sized rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly mission will undertake an unprecedented voyage of scientific discovery. And the work to ensure that this first-of-its-kind project can fulfill its ambitious exploration vision is underway in some of the nation’s most advanced space simulation and testing laboratories.

Set for launch in in 2028, the Dragonfly rotorcraft is being designed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, with contributions from organizations around the world. On arrival in 2034, Dragonfly will exploit Titan’s dense atmosphere and low gravity to fly to dozens of locations, exploring varied environments from organic equatorial dunes to an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials essential to life (at least as we know it) may have existed together.

Aerodynamic testing

When full rotorcraft integration and testing begins in February, the team will tap into a trove of data gathered through critical technical trials conducted over the past three years, including, most recently, two campaigns at the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel (TDT) facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia….

…“When Dragonfly enters the atmosphere at Titan and parachutes deploy after the heat shield does its job, the rotors are going to have to work perfectly the first time,” said Dave Piatak, branch chief for aeroelasticity at NASA Langley. “There’s no room for error, so any concerns with vehicle structural dynamics or aerodynamics need to be known now and tested on the ground. With the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel here at Langley, NASA offers just the right capability for the Dragonfly team to gather this critical data.”…

(14) ROBOTS AS FIRST RESPONDERS. “Robots Take Center Stage in DARPA Triage Challenge” – IEEE Spectrum has the story.

Last September, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unleashed teams of robots on simulated mass-casualty scenarios, including an airplane crash and a night ambush. The robots’ job was to find victims and estimate the severity of their injuries, with the goal of helping human medics get to the people who need them the most.

The final event of the DARPA Triage Challenge will take place in November, and Team Chiron from Carnegie Mellon University will be competing, using a squad of quadruped robots and drones. The team is led by Kimberly Elenberg, whose 28-year career as an army and U.S. Public Health Service nurse took her from combat surgical teams to incident response strategy at the Pentagon.

Why do we need robots for triage?

Kimberly Elenberg: We simply do not have enough responders for mass-casualty incidents. The drones and ground robots that we’re developing can give us the perspective that we need to identify where people are, assess who’s most at risk, and figure out how responders can get to them most efficiently.

When could you have used robots like these?

Elenberg: On the way to one of the challenge events, there was a four-car accident on a back road. For me on my own, that was a mass-casualty event. I could hear some people yelling and see others walking around, and so I was able to reason that those people could breathe and move.

In the fourth car, I had to crawl inside to reach a gentleman who was slumped over with an occluded airway. I was able to lift his head until I could hear him breathing. I could see that he was hemorrhaging and feel that he was going into shock because his skin was cold. A robot couldn’t have gotten inside of the car to make those assessments.

This challenge involves enabling robots to remotely collect this data—can they detect heart rate from changes in skin color or hear breathing from a distance? If I’d had these capabilities, it would have helped me identify the person at greatest risk and gotten to them first….

(15) TRAVEL TO FOREIGN SF CONVENTION CONCERNS ARE ECHOED BY SCIENTISTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Reporting and online discussion in various fora, including File770, has revealed some fans reluctance to travel to the US given increasing immigration scrutiny, including now new proposals for compulsory revealing social media data.  I myself probably could not enter the US as border officials might not buy into  my not having or owning a smartphone, and not being on the internet at home.  Meanwhile, some US-based pros and fans have been reluctant to leave the US for fear of difficulty getting back in.

These concerns are echoed by scientists travelling to international symposia and conferences.  The latest such expression of scientist concern was in a piece in the latest issue of Nature.  It noted that attendance at several of last year’s (2025) biggest science conferences fell and more are expected to be reduced in size this year.

For example, the latest AI conference, NeurIPS, held its main meeting in San Diego but also its first ever alternative location in Mexico City.  Meanwhile, a group of AI researchers hosted a spin-off conference, EurIPS in Copenhagen.

The Society for neurosciences annual gathering fell by 6% and they escaped fairly lightly.  The annual American Geophysical Union Conference saw over 30,000 participants in 2024 (which kind of puts Worldcon in its place) but last year numbers dropped by around a third!

Next year it is likely to drop further after this year the organisers had to announce to participants mid-event that they could not prevent immigration agents to enter the conference to do checks.

But it is not all to do with tougher entry. Quite a few Canadian scientists, along with tourists after Trump’s tariff tantrum and his saying that he wants to make Canada ‘the 51st’ state, are actively boycotting US meetings.

And then there is nervousness by trans and non-binary folk.

What happens in science fiction today, happens in science tomorrow.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Jim Janney, Jeffrey Smith, Francis Hamit, Joey Eschrich, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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 Cat Eldridge.]