25 The Scrolling Of Pixel 49

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE REASONS WHY. France 24’s English service delivers more information and insight about Angoulême festival: “Bam! Pow! Bubbles burst as Angoulême comics festival is cancelled”.

With the 2026 edition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival now officially cancelled, we take a look at what went wrong and who’s to blame. We dig into what pushed authors to massively boycott the 53rd edition of the festival, despite the economic losses for them and the southwestern French city.

(2) SILENT SERVICE. “Amazon Quietly Pulls Disastrous AI Dubs For Popular Anime After Outcry” reports Futurism.

If you watched the English-dubbed version of one of several popular anime on Amazon Prime Video lately, like “Banana Fish,” and “No Game, No Life,” you may have noticed something strange. The voices were generic, unexpressive, and at times robotic, completely disconnected from the action unfolding on screen. Some lines even sounded a little glitchy. In a word: it was a disaster.

The embarrassing English voices it turned out, were AI-generated. An entourage of actors didn’t sit down in a room somewhere recording take after take to bring these characters to life; instead the voice lines were automatically stitched together using what’s essentially glorified text-to-speech software, with predictably horrendous results.

Fans were furious. And the fallout on social media quickly became so vociferous that Amazon has now quietly pulled the AI dubs from several of the shows, including “Banana Fish.” The AI-generated Spanish dub for “Banana Fish” and “Vinland Saga,” however, are still available, Anime Corner noted….

(3) SOME HOPEFUL FUTURES. The Center for Science and the Imagination’s book Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures was released December 2 by the MIT Press. It includes fiction (by authors Gu Shi, Vandana Singh, Hannah Onoguwe, Libia Brenda, and Laura Watts) along with essays and visual art.

Where can we look for hopeful climate futures, when the global picture seems dominated by inaction or backsliding? While influential nations and international bodies seem adrift, absent, or flatfooted in the face of an accelerating climate emergency, vigorous action is happening at local and regional levels, propelled by coalitions of advocates, researchers, community leaders, and everyday people.

In this conversation on the new book Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures, we will talk with writers and thinkers from different regions to learn not only about hopeful climate stories and imaginaries but also local resources and efforts on the ground.

Edited by Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, the book presents speculative fiction, essays, and artworks that explore possible futures shaped by climate action, grounded in real science and the complexities of actual physical and human geographies around the world. Contributors represent 17 different countries from Mexico, Germany, and Sri Lanka to Nigeria, China, Norway, Brazil, and more: Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, Jason Anderson, Claire Armitstead, Libia Brenda, Azucena Castro, Andrea Chapela, Nalini Chhetri, Alejandra Espino del Castillo, Fabio Fernandes, Ed Finn, Pippa Goldschmidt, Adeline Johns-Putra, Joseph Kunkel, Ken Liu, Manjana Milkoreit, Gabriela Damián Miravete, Benjamin Ong, Hannah Onoguwe, Chinelo Onwualu, Martha Riva Palacio, Anna Pigott, Kim Stanley Robinson, Gu Shi, Vandana Singh, Nigel Topping, Emma Törzs, Iliana Vargas, Laura Watts, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, and Farhana Yamin.

There’s a virtual launch event for the book on Thursday, December 11 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern, featuring three contributors to the book: the SF writer, journalist, and data scientist Yudhanjaya Wijeratne; climate researcher Manjana Milkoreit; and SF writer and physicist Vandana Singh.

(4) HWA CROWN AWARDS. Historia Magazine revealed the winners of the HWA Crown Awards 2025, presented by the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA) to celebrate the best in recent historical writing, fiction and non-fiction.

The winners of the Gold Crown for fiction, the Non-fiction Crown and the Debut Crown were revealed on Wednesday, November 19, at an awards party at Crypt on the Green, a historic building in Clerkenwell.

HWA Gold Crown Award 2025

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate Books)

HWA Non-fiction Crown Award 2025

Moederland by Cato Pedder (John Murray)

(5) DEEP DEPOSITS. Not to be missed is the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction’s celebration of “The Library as a Turkey That Does Not Give Thanks” by John Clute titled “Transgressive Embedment”.

… So we’re not here at the moment to thank the kind of institutional “library” after the years of plague when books, once their information “content” was abstracted into digital form, were routinely destroyed; the kind of library whose innards, like frozen elevator music, evoke the terrifying cenotaphic interior spaces Stanley Kubrick created for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in order to demonstrate the denuded torpor Homo sapiens had sunk into by 2001: how desperately we needed help to mature as a species: we know the answer we gave. We can of course thank digital libraries for the abyssally fertile maps of nearly infinitve amounts of data they contain, data doors within data doors like Arabian Nightmares; but we cannot thank their makers for attempting to disable our deep intuition that in the end, after much journeying, maps are less not more. That even the profoundest of Borgesian maps can only describe more fully that which can be described. That when you misdescribe a thing in the world, the skinned torso of the Thing in the World does not become whatever. You do….

(6) S&S S.O.S. Cora Buhlert reviewed Swords of the Barbarians by Kenneth Bulmer, which she found to be “a not very good sword and sorcery novel”, for Galactic Journey: “[November 20, 1970] Year of the Cloud… and lesser lights (November Galactoscope #2)”.

… Now I happen to like sword and sorcery, and while very few authors manage to reach the heights of a Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, or C.L. Moore, even the lesser entries in the genre are at the very least entertaining. And so, when I spotted a cover (courtesy of Richard Clifton-Day) featuring a dark-haired, muscular and nearly naked barbarian with a sword squaring off against a somewhat more dressed barbarian with a red beard and horned helmet wielding a battle axe in the spinner rack of my trusty import bookstore, with a blurb promising “a sword and sorcery saga in the great tradition of Conan”, I of course took it home…

(7) U.F.FAUX. Later in November Cora returned to Galactic Journey with a review of what may well be the first found footage film ever, the 1970 UFO mockumentary The Delegation: “’[November 28, 1970] A True Fake Story: Die Delegation – eine utopische Reportage (The Delegation – a Utopian Documentary)”.

… The unaired footage looks rough and uncut. Clapperboards are visible, there are random cuts and lens flares, radio music plays in the background, the sound crackles and sometimes drops out altogether, people walk into the shot, wave at the camera and kids push in front of the camera and grin. In Washington DC, Roczinski stands outside the Pentagon and declares that the Pentagon has no official comment on UFOs. Then, he enters a car to interview a colonel of the US Air Force who notes that though the Pentagon’s official line is that there are no UFOs and no extraterrestrials, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. The colonel also points Roczinski to a 1955 report on the UFO phenomenon by Major Donald Keyhoe who came to the conclusion that the Soviets are not responsible for the UFO sightings and an extraterrestrial origin is the only explanation. Donald Keyhoe is a real person, a former pulp writer and military officer who wrote the bestselling books The Flying Saucers Are Real and The Flying Saucer Conspiracy and co-founded the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena NICAP. Afterwards, Roczinski tries to interview the Mailers, a black couple from Washington DC who claim to have been abducted by UFOs en route to Cleveland, only to reappear a few days later in El Paso, Texas. However, the neighbours of the Mailers bodily kick Roczinski and his cameraman Gerd Hannieck out of the apartment building, complete with shaky footage….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

November 3, 1968 — Brendan Fraser, 57.

By Paul Weimer:

“Patience is a virtue…”

“Not right now it isn’t!”

Brendan Fraser, as Rick O’Connell in the three Mummy movies, proved that the old formula of pulp action that started in the 30’s, The Mummy, and was revived somewhat by the Indiana Jones films in the 80’s, could have a bit of new life in the late 90’s.

Why did The Mummy succeed when The Phantom, The Shadow and other attempts at pulp action in the Nineties failed? A lot of that I give the credit to Brendan Fraser. Straight jawed handsome hero, but with humor and a modern sensibility, The Mummy’s success is in no small part thanks to him embodying the role of the central hero.

The movies have lots of other charms, from the supporting cast (which sadly gets somewhat less sparkling as one goes from the first to the third film), and good writing (again, which slips as we go down the movies). But Fraser is the tentpole around which the film runs. (Just consider how miscast Tom Cruise was in the recent Mummy remake and you will see what I mean–Fraser could have made hay out of that role). The alternate worlds where someone else took the O’Connell role are probably poorer for that choice.

Fraser is the kind of actor whose roles often were characters you want to be, be friends with, or get romantically entangled with. He has other genre work to his credit, too. Although the movie is uneven, he’s fun in Bedazzled, selling his soul to Elizabeth Hurley’s devil. Looney Tunes: Back in Action requires an actor who can act with Toons…Fraser fits that bill, too. Journey to the Center of the Earth…I admit I got vertigo trying to watch that one.

The strains of being an actor and stardom meant that Fraser took a decade off from movies, but I am delighted that he is back. He’s in a more mature, older form. I really like his work in Doom Patrol, for instance. Robotman should be a ridiculous character, and he is, but Fraser helps sell it. He played a villain in the never-released Batgirl movie (curse you, Warner Brothers). I’d like to someday see what he did with the role of Firefly.

And yes, I heard the news that there is going to be a new Mummy movie. For that, indeed, Patience is a Virtue.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY, TOO.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 3, 1958 — Terri Windling, 67.

By Cat Eldridge: I first encountered Terri Windling’s writing through reading The Wood Wife, a truly extraordinary fantasy that deserved the Mythopoeic Award it won. (The Hole in the Wall bar in it would be borrowed by Charles de Lint with her permission for a scene in his Medicine Road novel, an excellent novel.) I like the American edition with Susan Sedona Boulet’s art much better than I do the British edition with the Brian Froud art as I feel it catches the tone of the novel.

I would be very remiss not mention about her stellar work as the founding editor along with Ellen Datlow of what would be called The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror after the first volume which was simply The Year’s Best Fantasy, that being noted for those of you who would doubt correct me for not noting that. The series won three World Fantasy Awards and a Stoker as well.

They also edited the most splendid Snow White, Blood Red anthologies which were stories based on traditional folk tales. Lots of very good stuff there. Like the Mythic Fiction series is well worth reading and available at usual suspects and in digital form as well.

Oh, and I want to single out The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood which took on the difficult subject of child abuse. It garnered a much warranted Otherwise nomination.

Now let’s have a beer at the Dancing Ferret as I note her creation and editing (for the most part) of the Bordertown series. I haven’t read all of it, though I did read her first three anthologies several times and love the punks as you can see here on Life on the Border, but I’ve quite a bit of it and all of the three novels written in it, Emma Bull’s Finder: A Novel: of The Borderlands, is one of my comfort works, so she gets credit for that.

So now let’s move to an art credit for her. So have you seen the cover art for Another Way to Travel by Cats Laughing? I’ve the original pen and ink art that she did here.

Which brings me to the Old Oak Wood series which is penned by her and illustrated by Wendy Froud. Now Wikipedia and most of the reading world thinks that it consists of three lovely works — A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale, The Winter Child and The Faeries of Spring Cottage.

But there’s a story that Terri wrote that never got published anywhere but on Green Man. It’s an Excerpt from The Old Oak Chronicles: Interviews with Famous Personages by Professor Arnel Rootmuster. It’s a charming story, so go ahead and read it.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

BirdBrains found a bad sign.
Heart of the City falls into movies.
Off the Mark knows one substance is impervious!
Reality Check finds one detail of a TV series unbelievable, if you can believe that.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal predicts
Yaffle pays full attention to the man behind the curtain.

(11) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] On last night’s Jeopardy!, the category was “Pulp Fiction.” Here are 4 screenshots from the show. And no, I didn’t get all of the clues.

(12) TIME TRAVEL ANTHEM. [Item by Steven French.] A little tangential perhaps but here’s Chris Hayes on writing the song “The Power of Love” for Back to the Future: “We didn’t think Back to the Future sounded plausible – or good’: Huey Lewis and the News on The Power of Love” in the Guardian.

When I wrote it, I had no idea what was going to happen or how popular it was going to be. It ended up being an integral part of the whole Back to the Future franchise, the biggest song in our career, and gave us our first No 1, which was exciting. What’s weird about it, though, is that the song really has nothing to do with the film whatsoever. We were given a synopsis of the screenplay of the movie, and I read through the whole thing and I remember thinking to myself: “This doesn’t sound plausible or like it’s going to be good.” And boy was I wrong!

(13) THEREMIN NEWS. [Item by Dann.] The New York Times recently had a piece on the theremin. Thought it might be of interest for obvious reasons. Although the authors didn’t cover the most obvious reason for some odd reason. Most unreasonable of them. “The Beguiling, Misunderstood Theremin” at Archive.ph.

… Utopian visions of liberation have been entwined in the theremin’s history for as long as it has existed. The inventor of the instrument, the Russian-born engineer Leon Theremin, told The New York Times in 1927 that his “apparatus,” which he believed could produce an unprecedented range of tonal colors and sounds, “frees the composer from the despotism of the 12-note tempered piano scale, to which even violinists must adapt themselves.”

Theremin, a physicist and amateur cellist, would go on to serve time in a Siberian labor camp, spy for the Soviet government and invent an electronic security system used at Sing Sing prison in Ossining, N.Y. But first, he created his musical apparatus by accident. He was developing an electronic device for measuring the density of gases when he realized that the sounds it emitted changed when he moved his hands.

In the late 1920s, RCA began to manufacture and sell the theremin, making it the first mass-produced electronic instrument. Today, perhaps 140 original models remain. “At the time that it came out, it was promoted as being easily playable,” Chrysler said, standing in front of an original RCA theremin housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s music gallery, “which of course wasn’t true.”…

(14) WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF THE EARTH DID NOT HAVE ANY AXIAL TILT? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Curious Cases is a BBC Radio 4 programme hosted by a scientist and comedian who has a passion for science on the side. This week they looked at the ‘what if’ scenario of the Earth not having any axial tilt.

Because the Earth has tilt, we obviously get seasons and this in itself would mess up a lot of biology. Many multicellular terrestrial species use the seasons to govern their life cycles breeding in the seasons of plenty.

Now, this you might not think would be a big deal. You might suppose that a non-tilted Earth would be more a mediocre place and so the absence of seasons would be no big deal. However, researchers have modeled a non-tilted Earth and it is not good news.

A non-tilted Earth would see more expansive frozen poles as well as more expansive sub-tropical zone deserts: The Sahara would be bigger as would the central Australian desert. The tropical forest zone would be reduced as would the comfortable temperate zones.

For those of us in Brit Cit, it would be like March all year round but with more and stronger storms due to changed weather track patterns. Conversely, somewhere like Melbourne, Australia, would have something like 20°C days all year round. However, Melbourne would be on the edge of the expanded Australian desert and so be far drier than today: so kiss goodbye to Australia’s Darling agricultural bread basket.

The show’s hosts and one of their guests also briefly considered that a non-tilted Earth would see the dinosaur destroying asteroid miss a land impact and hit the ocean. This would reduce sulphate injection into the atmosphere, which cooled the Earth, and also increase water injection into the stratosphere so causing a warming effect. The actual difference between such a non-tilted Earth strike and what actually happened depends on how the mix of these two effects played out. However, one of the guests muses that more dinosaurs may have survived in this scenario and possible co-exist with humans today. (Have I ever told you that I have never really forgiven the dinosaurs for what they did to Raquel Welch?) Here I was minded – and sadly they did not mention this – Harry Harrison’s mid-1980s Eden trilogy of books whose central conceit is that dinosaurs survived through to today.

Could you survive an eternal winter? Or is endless summer sun a more appealing prospect? Lots of us are grateful for the seasonal changes that shape the world around us, but this week Hannah and Dara are asking what life would look like without the axial tilt that brings each hemisphere closer and further away from the sun as the seasons change each year. Listener Andrew from Melbourne wants to know what would happen if the planet stood perfectly upright, no lean, no tilt, no seasons. But what else could happen? Is Earth’s 23-degree slant the cosmic fluke that made life possible?

To find out, Hannah and Dara explore how losing the tilt reshapes climate, ecosystems, evolution and maybe even the fate of the dinosaurs.

This was another of the series’ good editions and you can access it here.

The present day biome map of N. America. If the Earth did not have any axial tilt then the ice and tundra zones would expand as would the semi-desert of S.W. USA. The cool and warm temperate zones would contract.

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

AudioFile Magazine’s SF and Fantasy Audiobook Picks for December 2025

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Mike Glyer

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

THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES

by Ray Bradbury | Read by Dion Graham
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 8.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

As the book world celebrates the 75th anniversary of Bradbury’s classic, Dion Graham’s stellar narration blasts off with a group of astronauts headed to Mars. Graham vocalizes each character with precision and sensitivity. Whether it’s the arrogance of the first astronauts, Ylla sharing her dream about the man from the sky, Father Peregrine seeking redemption for the Martians, or the whispery-voiced Janice discussing her fear of her trip to join her beloved on Mars, Graham imbues each character with an audible soul.

A RUIN, GREAT AND FREE: The Convergence Saga, Book 3

by Cadwell Turnbull | Read by Dion Graham
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Blackstone Audio | 10.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

Golden Voice Dion Graham narrates the conclusion to the Convergence Saga trilogy. Almost two years have elapsed since anti-monster riots have occurred in Boston, but the multiverse hasn’t become any safer for monsters. In the monster settlement in Moon, the residents are facing a big decision: remain hidden or fight to preserve their right to survive. Graham has a voice for everyone—humans, monsters, gods, and AI.

SUNWARD

by William Alexander | Read by Lindsey Dorcus
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 5.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

The dark, intense cold of space is warmed by the emotional connections in this novel and by Lindsey Dorcus’s expert narration. Courier Tova Lir, captain of the NEEDLE and loving foster parent of a juvenile AI, is on a routine mission when a lunar disaster upends everything. Dorcus invests each of Tova’s fostered bots with vocal personalities as distinct as their names: Cosmas, Torque, Halley, and Agatha Panza von Sparkles. Balancing humor and heavy themes, and ending on a cliff-hanger, this sci-fi romp is a charmer.

CINDER HOUSE

by Freya Marske | Read by Anna Burnett
[Macmillan Audio | 4.5 hrs.]

REVIEW

After having been murdered at 16 by her stepmother, “Ella” now haunts her family home. Narrator Anna Burnett deftly handles Ella’s transition from a lonely girl to a lonely ghost. Burnett’s portrayal of her longing and frustration is heartrending, especially as she confronts hard truths about herself and her family. Add a royal ball, a handsome prince, a clever princess, and a looming confrontation between Ella and her stepfamily—and the tension is ratcheted up to nearly unbearable levels.

GODZILLA and GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN

by Shigeru Kayama, Jeffrey Angles [Trans.] | Read by Kaipo Schwab
[Tantor Media | 7.25 hrs.]

REVIEW

What a treat for Godzilla fans—and isn’t that just about everyone—a production beautifully performed by Kaipo Schwab. The two stories in this audiobook, translated into English for the first time, conjure up unforgettable images of the rampaging monster through the eyes of his victims. The novellas were written by Shigeru Kayama, who wrote the original 1954 Godzilla movie. Schwab flawlessly imbues the characters with personalities. Kayama’s thinly disguised warning about nuclear weapons comes through clearly, and Schwab captures all the terror therein.

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Pixel Scroll 12/2/25 Papa Was A Rolling Scroll, Wherever He Laid His Pixels Was His Home

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE EAGLE OBSESSION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Some members of the London/Kent border Northumberland Heath Science Fiction Society are being torn on Thursday 11th December, the evening of its monthly gathering (the second Thursday of the month) and its Christmas meet. (By the way, any Filers in the northern half of southeast London are most welcome.) That day also happens to see the cinematic debut of The Eagle Obsession, a documentary about the Eagle spacecraft that was a regular feature of the Gerry Anderson show Space 1999. (Premiere details here.)

The documentary follows an individual building his own, mini Eagle craft in his garden. The documentary also features: one William Shatner (on the bridge of the Enterprise); TV and film novelisator Kevin J. Anderson; actress Barbara Bain; actor Nick Tate; Apollo astronaut Charles Duke; scientist astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor among others…

(2) ANGOULÊME 2026 CANCELLED. One of the biggest events of its type in the world, “The Angoulême International Comics Festival draws in around 200,000 people, ballooning the population of the town fivefold, and filling the coffers of local businesses so they can survive through to the summer tourism period.” But a wrangle between the festival organizers and public funders will keep it from being held next year. “ANGOULÊME 2026 cancelled, Bondoux defiant” reports Comics Beat.

Angoulême International Comics Festival’s 2026 event cannot go ahead but Franck Bondoux is not responsible, that is the claim laid out in a letter delivered today by his lawyers. In it Bondoux (under the guise of his company 9e Art+) places the blame for the major French festival’s cancellation entirely on public funders, demands to remain as festival organiser for the 2027 event – and possibly beyond. This, the latest turn in the crisis engulfing one of the world’s largest dedicated comics events.

Today’s missive arrived after a deadline of December 1 was set by public funders last Thursday (November 27), where they requested Bondoux provide a “prompt and comprehensive response” on whether his company could feasibly go ahead with the next Angoulême Festival, scheduled to take place January 29 to February 1, 2026. The public funders who set the deadline included Angoulême’s mayor Xavier Bonnefont; the representatives of the départment of Charente (of which Angoulême is the administrative capital), president Jérôme Sourisseau and prefect Jérôme Harnois; and Nouvelle Aquitaine regional council president Alain Rousset. It seems instead of a comprehensive response, Bondoux decided to threaten a lawsuit instead.

According to the letter, sent by his company’s representatives at the law firm August Debouzy [translated via DeepL]:

“[T]he 2026 edition of the Festival will not be able to take place under appropriate conditions. This situation is in no way the result of a choice made by 9e Art+, whose sole objective is to organize the FIBD, but rather a unilateral decision taken without consultation by public funders.”

There is presently no indication in the letter that Bondoux has any intention of stepping down as Angoulême Festival general delegate (a self-created position held since 2004) or that his company, which operates the festival, is going anywhere. Bondoux’s present contract for 9e Art+ runs through 2027, and he claims that year’s event “legally belongs to 9e Art+”. It is possible he (or his company, which he majority owns) could mount legal action to try to ensure the Association FIBD’s original (widely contested) result to keep 9e Art+ running the show, despite the owner’s decision to nullify and rerun the process following immense industry backlash, which in the letter is claimed to have been entirely done by “local public actors”…

…According to the letter, the 2026 cancellation was due entirely to the national, regional, departmental, and municipal administrations’ joint decision on November 20 to withdraw their funding, which fills nearly half of the Festival budget. Curiously the message sidesteps mentioning that their decision actually came after a massive author boycott and publisher withdrawals….

(3) FEEDBACK TREK’S WRITERS DIDN’T WANT. “Exclusive: The Inside Story Of The TNG Incident That Ended Star Trek Table Reads For 3 Decades” at TrekMovie.com.

Table reads, where the cast sits around a table with writers, producers, the director, and other stakeholders, have been a staple of theater productions, films, and many TV series for decades. In the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the cast did table reads for every script, but during that first season, those reads came to an abrupt end. And we found out why…

…Recently, Jonathan Frakes and Kitty Swink were on our All Access Star Trek podcast to talk about Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, and Jonathan mentioned the distance between the writers and the actors during his time playing Riker on TNG. We asked what happened to the table reads Denise had mentioned, and he gave us this tidbit:

“… that went terribly sideways when one of us said something like ‘What is that smell? Oh, it’s it’s a scene!.’ Not sure which actor, but that offended enough writers that they said ‘Never again.’”

This gossipy nugget was too good to ignore, so when TrekMovie’s Anthony Pascale was at the Trek to Chicago con last weekend, he tracked down Frakes’ TNG co-star Brent Spiner to ask him about it—to be honest, we thought he was the likely culprit—and he remembered the incident clearly. “It’s the salmon pages, right?” he asked, referring to the color of revised pages and adding a key bit of fishy context to the “what’s that smell” dig. Brent then described what happened:

“We used to have these meetings where we would have to get the script and give our notes and and then we got this script that we all, you know, had a lot of notes on and then, but Jonathan was the culprit. He’s the one. He called it ‘This is the biggest hack work I’ve ever seen and or I’ve ever read,’ or something like that… Jonathan said it’s hack work…”

Spiner also remembered specifically who it was that ended the practice of table reads, pointing to the season 1 showrunner:

“Maurice Hurley, I think, had written that script, and he went, Okay, we’re not doing this anymore, and that was the last time we met, right?”…

(4) THE SCRIPT DOCTOR IS IN. The New York Times wants us to know “Tom Stoppard Wrote Dialogue for Indiana Jones and Obi-Wan Kenobi”. Although what Stoppard said about his Star Wars effort leaves doubt whether his lines made it to the screen.

…The unfailingly erudite, epigrammatic, idea-juggling wizardry of Tom Stoppard conditioned theatergoers to expect the Stoppardian starting with his career-making debut, 1966’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”

This quality earned Stoppard, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 88, screenwriting credits from directors looking to crack the codes of such fellow highbrows as Leo Tolstoy (“Anna Karenina”), Vladimir Nabokov (“Despair”) and Graham Greene (“The Human Factor”). He won an Academy Award in 1999 for putting words into the mouths of both William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe in “Shakespeare in Love.”

But he also helped provide dialogue for the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Indiana Jones and Ichabod Crane in a far less conspicuous capacity. Stoppard’s sporadic (and lucrative) forays into the world of Hollywood blockbusters rarely yielded official credits, but he soon joined the likes of David Mamet, Elaine May and Robert Towne as heavyweights who were perfectly willing to roll up their sleeves and answer the time-honored Hollywood cry “Get me rewrite!”

The first of these came after Stoppard had collaborated with Steven Spielberg on the 1987 film “Empire of the Sun.” Spielberg tapped him to give “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” a bit more heart — but not too much. “It was an emotional story, but I didn’t want to get sentimental,” Spielberg told Empire magazine in a 2006 oral history. “And it gave Tom Stoppard, who was uncredited, a lot to write. Tom is pretty much responsible for every line of dialogue.”

A side-by-side comparison of Stoppard’s “Last Crusade” screenplay with an earlier one from Jeffrey Boam, the credited screenwriter, unearths further changes. Stoppard (who was credited pseudonymously as Barry Watson) cuts several superfluous characters and introduces the audience-pleasing role of Jones’s father, played by Sean Connery, 23 pages earlier. According to the performance-based pay structure that the Stoppard biographer Hermione Lee dug up in an “Indiana Jones” memo, his rewrite earned him nearly $2 million….

… When Stoppard was in rehearsals for a 2014 Broadway revival of “The Real Thing” starring Ewan McGregor, a Time Out interviewer reminded Stoppard that he had earlier worked with his leading man on “Revenge of the Sith,” the third of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” prequels. Stoppard, who said “I interfered with George’s script in a mild way” when describing his role on “Sith,” clearly hadn’t given the project much thought in the intervening decade. “I wonder if he got to say anything I wrote,” Stoppard said of McGregor. “I must ask him.”…

(5) STRANGER THINGS THEATER SCREEN OPTION. “Stranger Things Finale Runtime, Theater Locations Revealed by Netflix” and The Hollywood Reporter took notes.

Stranger Things: The Finale is coming.

The highly anticipated final showdown of the mega-hit series will be simultaneously playing out on both the small and big screen, and Netflix on Tuesday revealed both the official runtime for the feature-length ending, as well as the locations where fans can see the final episode in movie theaters.

First, the official run time for The Finale will be two hours and five minutes.

Next, fan screenings of the final episode of the coming-of-age sci-fi saga will be taking place in more than 500 theaters in the U.S. and Canada starting on Dec. 31 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET — the same time the episode makes its global premiere on Netflix — and will run through Jan. 1, 2026.

Visit www.ST5Finale.com for the full list of participating cities and theater locations and to RSVP. Exhibitors are selling a concession voucher for fans to reserve seats via an RSVP list, meaning Netflix won’t earn revenue on the fan screenings….

(6) NEXT TO GODLINESS. From the Heinlein Society Facebook page yesterday:

Robert Heinlein envisioned the fresher with automatic showering and drying years ago! Now a reality!

“Japan Human washing machine cleans head to toe in 15 mins” at Interesting Engineering.

The machine acts like a high-tech automatic spa pod that can wash an occupant head to toe in minutes. Users enter the pod and recline into its comfortable seat.

Once inside, the pod is closed, and the machine washes them using microbubbles. The machine can also rinse off the bubbles and dry the occupant, all while playing relaxing music….

…The pod itself measures 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long by 3.28 feet (1 meter) wide by 8.53 feet (2.6 meters) tall, making it big enough for most people to comfortably lie inside. The cleaning is achieved using bubbles so small they can get into pores, removing oil, dirt, and dead skin….

…This is a high-end Japanese spa technology already used in baths and salons. Sensors in the pod monitor your vital signs to help prevent fainting, panic, or medical issues.

So what’s the catch? The price, of course. According to reports, the machine will hit the market with a cool 60 Million Yen ($385,000) price tag…

Lazarus Long wants to know if there’s room enough to bring his gun. Which, as we know, he never goes to the ‘fresher without.

(7) MEDIEVAL SOLDIERS: A DATABASE. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] Really. A real find for fantasy stories, these were actual people, not NPCs. “We built a database of 290,000 English medieval soldiers – here’s what it reveals” the creators tell The Conversation. (This is a direct link to the site: “Medieval Soldier”.)

When you picture medieval warfare, you might think of epic battles and famous monarchs. But what about the everyday soldiers who actually filled the ranks? Until recently, their stories were scattered across handwritten manuscripts in Latin or French and difficult to decipher. Now, our online database makes it possible for anyone to discover who they were and how they lived, fought and travelled.

To shed light on the foundations of our armed services – one of England’s oldest professions – we launched the Medieval Soldier Database in 2009. Today, it’s the largest searchable online database of medieval nominal data in the world. It contains military service records giving names of soldiers paid by the English Crown. It covers the period from 1369 to 1453 and many different war zones.

We created the database to challenge assumptions about the lack of professionalism of soldiers during the hundred years war and to show what their careers were really like….

…This data is mainly drawn from muster rolls (lists of names of soldiers comprising the military force) of men-at-arms (soldiers with full armour and a range of weapons) and archers. We can even see the little dots used by officials taking the muster to confirm the soldiers had turned up and had the right equipment. All these soldiers were paid and the Exchequer wanted to be assured it was receiving value for money….

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bound and Gagged originates a product.
Dinosaur Comics compares pets and kids.
Frank and Ernest sees a building suited to its brand.
Luann explains. Or possibly inundates.
Pearls Before Swine knows readers.
Strange Brew’s class meets the teacher.
The Argyle Sweater observes the malaproprieties.

(9) FOLLOW THAT RIVER HORSE. Jeffrey Smith is on the trail of a Tiptree reference in “Tippo” at Khatru.

Rummaging around in the internet I stumbled across the phrase “Tiptree’s hippopotamus.” Since I was friends with “James Tiptree”/Alice Sheldon, I was curious as to what that could mean….

He Googled the term, and Google, like it does, made its first return a long AI exposition. Smith quotes it at the link, and marvels at an apparent AI hallucination that takes center stage.

…I was a member of the Motherboard of the Tiptree Award for twenty years or so, and while we commissioned a piece of original artwork for every winner, we never asked any artist for a hippopotamus figurine — at least during my tenure. I can’t speak for what happened before or after my time on the Board, but I think I would have heard about a years-long hippo reign….

(10) BENTO, ER, BENNU. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] They found the kickstarter for life. So, they’re going to rename this asteroid Bento, maybe? “Asteroid Bennu carries all ingredients to kick-start life as we know it” says New Scientist.

All the essential ingredients to kick-start life as we know it have now been found in samples from the asteroid Bennu. This shows that asteroids could have delivered all the prerequisites for life to Earth – and perhaps elsewhere.

In 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission extracted samples from Bennu, an asteroid that was orbiting the sun hundreds of millions of kilometres away, between Mars and Jupiter. The mission returned the samples to Earth in 2023. Since then, small amounts of the 121 grams collected have been sent out to labs across the globe for analysis, so specialists in detecting each type of biological compound could set to work.

The first studies revealed the presence of water, carbon and several organic molecules. Next came the detection of amino acids, formaldehyde and all five of the nucleobases found in RNA and DNA, as well as phosphates. However, this isn’t quite enough to put together the molecules that carry genetic information. The rungs of the ladder of RNA and DNA contain a sugar, which is ribose in RNA and deoxyribose in DNA – and that was missing from the first analyses of the Bennu material.

Now, Yoshihiro Furukawa at Tohoku University in Japan and his colleagues have crushed a small share of the sample and mixed it with acid and water….

(11) FUTURE LUNAR VISITOR. Space.com reports “1st European to fly to the moon will be German”.

A German astronaut will be the first European to fly to the moon with a future NASA-led Artemis mission, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher said at the ESA Ministerial Council, a high-level conference deciding the agency’s budget and future direction, on Thursday, Nov. 27 in Bremen, Germany.

Germany is ESA’s biggest budget contributor. An Airbus factory in Bremen assembles the European Service Module, which provides propulsion, power and atmosphere regeneration for the Orion space capsule designed to house astronauts during Artemis moon trips. Europe also builds components for the Lunar Gateway, a space station intended to orbit the Moon from 2027. Elements of the Lunar Gateway are being built by consortia led by France and Italy, whose nationals will be on subsequent Artemis flights, Aschbacher said at the conference. It is in exchange for these contributions that ESA secured three seats on the moon-bound trips. “An ESA astronaut traveling beyond [low Earth orbit] for the first time will be a huge inspiration and source of pride for their country and for Europe at large,” Aschbacher said at the conference….

(12) CAN YOU DIG IT? “World’s largest lithium deposit lies under a supervolcano in the U.S.” says Earth.com.

A new study argues that McDermitt caldera may host about 20 to 40 million metric tons of lithium, likely the largest deposit yet identified.

Using the recent United States’ average contract price for lithium carbonate, about 37,000 dollars per ton, that estimate comes out to be nearly $1.5 trillion.

The deposit sits inside a caldera, a large volcanic crater formed when a magma chamber collapses. This particular basin spans roughly 28 miles north to south and 22 miles east to west along the Nevada Oregon line.

Work on this deposit was led by Thomas R. Benson, PhD, at Lithium Americas Corporation (LAC). His research focuses on how lithium rich minerals form in volcanic terrains.

About 16 million years ago, a huge eruption emptied much of the magma chamber beneath this area. That outburst left behind thick sheets of hot ash that later cooled into hard volcanic rock on the caldera floor.

Later, the crater held a long lived lake that collected volcanic ash and mud. Those sediments formed lacustrine, formed in a lake environment, claystones that now trap much of the lithium rich clay…

(13) DAMAGE TO LAUNCH SITE HAS IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. Here’s more information about an item mentioned here the other day: “Russian Launch Site Mishap Shows Perilous State of Storied Space Program” at the New York Times (behind a paywall.)

The launchpad Russia uses for sending astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station is out of commission after a mishap last week during the liftoff of a Soyuz rocket.

The rocket itself headed to space without incident, taking three astronauts — Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and Chris Williams of NASA — to the space station. But the force of the rocket’s exhaust shoved a service platform used for prelaunch preparations out of its protective shelter. The platform fell into the flame trench below.

Photos and videos of the launch site the next day showed the platform out of place and mangled.

“It’s heavily damaged,” said Anatoly Zak, who publishes RussianSpaceWeb.com, a close tracker of Russia’s space activities, “and so probably it will have to be rebuilt. Maybe some of the hardware can be reused. But it fell down, and it’s destroyed.”

This is the latest embarrassment for the once-proud Russian space program, which the United States relied on from 2011 to 2020 to get NASA astronauts to orbit. The incident also raises questions about the future of the International Space Station if the launchpad cannot be quickly repaired.

In a statement issued on Friday, Roscosmos, the state corporation in charge of the Russian space program, confirmed unspecified “damage” at the launchpad.

“All necessary parts needed for repairs are at our disposal, and the damage will be dealt with in the near future,” it said.

What is clear is that Roscosmos will not be able to launch any astronauts to the I.S.S. until the pad is fixed.

(14) HERDING CATS COMMERCIAL. From 2006: “EDS, an HP Company ‘Cat Herders’”.

…”I’m living a dream. Not everyone can do what we do. I wouldn’t do nothing else.”

“It ain’t an easy job but when you bring a herd into town and you ain’t lost one of them, ain’t a feeling like it in the world.”…

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

TAFF 2026 Race Seeks Candidates

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund administrators are seeking North American nominees for next year’s eastbound race, which will send the elected North American delegate to MetropolCon, the 2026 Eurocon, in Berlin, Germany. The convention will take place from July 2-5.

TAFF administrators Mikołaj Kowalewski and Sarah Gulde and the Eurocon committee are looking forward to helping with travel arrangements to Eurocon and beyond.

Kowalewski and Sarah Gulde say, “We are also very grateful to the Eastercon 2026 (Iridescence) for continuing to support us and host the final days of voting for the delegate.”

Candidates require three North American nominators and two European nominators, as well as candidates’ platforms of up to 101 words and $20 bond to the fund. Platforms will be published in the ballot form to explain why voters should support the candidate; the bond is taken as a token that they will make the trip.

Nominations will close on 1 February 23:59 Pacific North West time, and voting will open soon after. Voting will close the day after the Eastercon ends, on 7 April, 23:59 Pacific North West Time.

Candidates and their nominators should contact the TAFF administrators using the email addresses below.

Mikołaj Kowalewski (European TAFF Administrator): [email protected] / [email protected]
Sarah Gulde (American TAFF Administrator): [email protected]

[Based on a press release.]

A File 770 Special Convention Report: Starbase Indy 2025, Part Two

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Chris M. Barkley:

The mission of The Starbase is to provide inspirational content and activities relating to Star Trek, STEM, and humanitarianism to aid in creating a future that is inclusive and diverse. We host a yearly gathering place to connect creators and explorers to the community with fun and enriching experiences for all.

The Mission Statement of Starbase Indianapolis

In all of my decades in fandom, I must say that some of the most satisfactory experiences have come from attending smaller sff conventions. And this past weekend’s StarBase Indy was no exception.

Because, in my humble opinion, something that is designed to be bigger, brighter and louder, isn’t always better for me, or other fans for that matter.

I was delighted when I went to my first convention, Midwestcon 27, in June of 1976, that it was relatively small (for a relaxacon with no programming) of several hundred people. I was positively shocked by the number of people and the size of programming options a year later when I attended my first Worldcon in Miami Beach.

That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with DragonCon, Comic-Cons and other various commercially run for profit, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But the burning question these days is how will sff fandom survive? Will smaller cons give way to just a series of glitzy, monied, regional mega-cons with signing booths, supermarket sized dealer rooms whose doors close each day at 6pm?

Starbase Indy started out as a media oriented convention that booked various actors and creative talent from the Star Trek fanverse. But after going into the red and several SBI members running things having financial problems on more than a few occasions to pay con bills, they had to scale back.

What Starbase Indy did to survive was to scale down the budget and evolve into a smaller, family friendly oriented convention built by loyal and local fans, who applied a generous amount of love and devotion.

Because the true heart of sff fandom, no matter what genre or interest being celebrated, is based on love and devotion of its fans. And that’s how fandom will survive.

And for such a small convention of less than 500 people, the tracks of programming were quite exceptional. For example:

Zeitgeist and Media

L-R, Franklin Oliver, Keith DiCandido, Lisa Meece (Moderator)

Zeitgeist means the spirit of the age. Is the culture and climate of an age reflective of the media of that time, or does media drive the zeitgeist? We talk a lot about the technology Star Trek has introduced to people – but it has also introduced intellectual and political ideas. What difference does that make?

Fiction as Commentary on Social Issues

Our current society sometimes feels like a timebomb of dissent and anger. Instead of (or maybe in addition to) going to a protest and carrying a sign, some authors reveal their feelings through their writing, be it prose or poetry. What have you read or what have you written that takes a stand? Does it make a difference?

IDIC VS DEI

Star Trek fans have been familiar with the idea of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations for years. Let’s discuss how IDIC is like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Is it the same thing? Are there differences? Perennial favorite Dr. Ann Burton will lead this conversation.

Think Like a Starfleet Engineer: Fast Decisions, Safe Systems, Real-Life Wins

A high-energy, funny, and practical talk that turns Star Trek themes into tools you can use tomorrow. Drawing on frontline experience as a Marine with 1st Light Armored Recon during the Iraq invasion, plus years in mechatronic engineering, AI development, and custom fabrication, I translate ideas from my philosophy into a Starfleet-style playbook for better decisions under pressure—at work, at home, and in the maker lab. Zero jargon. Big stories. Memorable frameworks. (Hosted by Charles Thomas)

The Neurodivergent Cosplayer

Interested in cosplay, but not sure how it will work with your neurospicy brain? Come listen to a cosplayer who has experience with both. (Hosted by DangerAngel)

Interactive Robotics

Come and play with Kids Explore Robotics, a hands-on robotics activity that allows you to explore by building, designing, and using robots of all kinds. (Hosted by Vinod Agrawal)

Drink With A Scientist

Come to the hotel bar and ask the scientists in attendance your questions. (Hosted by Rufus Cochran)

The complete listing of Starbase Indy’s 2025 programming schedule can be found here.

I haven’t been to a Star Trek convention in a few decades but I found it refreshing to attend a variety of panels not directly related to any particular franchise show.

Of course, I leaped at the opportunity to participate in two of the 109 panels offered this past weekend.

Bringing Writing to the Screen

Featuring (from l-r) Da’Rell Miller, myself, James Bradford Huston, Demetrius Witherspoon, we all recounted our creative methods and experiences writing for film and television. I was featured because I am not only a film and television reviewer, I am also hard at work on a (super-secret, double probation) spec screenplay that will debut on File770.com in three parts in 2026.

Adventures in Fandom

Featuring (l-r) Starfleet Admiral Joe Campbell, Moxie Ann Magnus, myself and podcast host Lisa Meece were in conversation for a Starbase Indy podcast in which I discussed how I used a Harlan Ellison anecdote to avoid trouble at Chicon 2000, incurred the wrath of JK Rowling (2005) and my ongoing lack of a Hugo Award. (A link to this and other StarBase Indy 2025 podcasts will be made available here in the near future.)

In case no one has noticed lately, I am (still) only one person. As small as Starbase Indy is, I could not go to all of the panels, podcast recordings and events. Also, Juli and i decided to leave the convention early Saturday evening because of the Winter Storm Warning for the Central Indiana/Ohio Valley area.

But, I did make the rounds and met some very interesting attendees.

Jean Davis of Holland, Michigan and her muse Laya of Eggs, travel to conventions together. Ms. Davis not only writes children’s books (about chickens, of course) she also writes sf and horror as well.

Novelist Ross Carley is the author of several sf mystery novels including a series featuring hacker/private investigator Wolf Ruger and most recently, two novels in the Cybercode Chronicles, The Three-Legged Assassin (2022) and The Pro Bono Assassin (2024). Carley resides in Oak Landen, Indiana and Florida.

Demetrius Witherspoon is the creator, writer, director, producer of the award winning Submerge Universe series. His resume includes five films— Submerge: Echo 51, available on Amazon Prime, Tubi and the animated pilot Submerge: Krag Conquest on YouTube, as well as comic books, novels, board games, and apparel. DV Entertainment Pictures

Novelist Jeffrey Lee was born in Indianapolis in 1994. He has stated that his love for Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series were his major influences in his decision to become a storyteller. His most recent novel is The Beat of Broken Wings.

Jacquelyn Montenaro is a poet. Reaper’s HR Complaint, the very first poem in her just published collection, Death.exe Has Stopped goes as follows:

Death knocks.
I don’t answer.
He files paperwork.
“Client refuses to cooperate.”
Guess I’m unkillable
File that under: still here.

And there’s plenty more of that in this slim but potent volume in which Ms. Montenaro seeks to keep the encroaching feeling of loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts from consuming the reader. I will also note that several of these works should be seriously considered for a Hugo Awards in the Best Poetry category because they’re THAT GOOD. She lives with her family in Indianapolis.

BT. Littell may be an IT worker by day but he writes heroic fantasy by night. So far he has written three novels and a short story collection including Land of Madness, Downfall, Road to Ruin, and The Tales of Drendil, all inspired by his love of the works of Robert Jordan, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He resides in Columbus, Ohio but professes he does not follow the exploits of the Ohio State football team.

Bradley McCribben is neurodivergent writer whose works involve complex emotions and relationships set against elaborate fantasy and science fiction settings. His previous book, Countless Roads is a collection of short stories that was published last year. His most recent novel, Starborn Descendants, was published by Sheltering Tree Earth this past August. He, his wife Jackie and their children, Tyler and Sailor, live in Indianapolis.

James Bradford Huston’s Linkedin description is as follows: “Worked in childcare, non-profit, and film industry sectors for the last 20 years. Lots of experience, flexible, creative, and fun to work with.” A prolific writer, producer and director of short films and television ads, Mr. Huston was attending SBI to promote the final screening of his newest short film, Winter of Empires, before it begins streaming on December 4th. He also bears more than a passing resemblance to Seth Rogen, but I’m quite sure he’s aware of that…

Keith Robert Andreassi DeCandido is well known to readers of File 770. His credits as a writer and editor of sf, fantasy, comics, movie and tv tie-in novelizations, podcasts, reviews, columns and as musician are just TOO DAMN NUMEROUS to summarize here. Needless to say it was a great pleasure to see him at SBI and I hope he had a fabulous time.

Juli and I met cos-player David Whitehead at the hotel bar. He was picking up a to-go order in his splendid Starfleet uniform and it seemed, at the time, mandatory that we photograph him for this report. Mr Whitehead is from Atlanta, Georgia and has attended Dragoncon many times. This past weekend marked his first visit to Starbase Indy and he readily assured us that it will not be his last.

“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Gene Roddenberry

If you would like to donate to the Starbase Indy directly, you can use the QR code below or visit their website at: https://www.starbaseindy.org/ (SBI donation QR code attached below)

Photos of various display tables. Click for larger image.

Pixel Scroll 12/1/25 Mama Was A Pixel, Daddy Was A Scroll, I Was Born To Be Filed

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) LACON V WILL GIVE POETRY HUGO. LAcon V organizers today announced “Best Poem” will be the optional additional category for the 2026 Hugo Awards. This will be the second time that a Hugo Award has been presented for poetry. The 2025 Seattle Worldcon also ran it as their optional special category. The winning work was “A War of Words,” by Marie Brennan. Read the complete press release here: “Hugo Award for Poetry Will Be Presented by LAcon V”.

(2) NEW LACON V SPECIAL GUEST. LAcon V organizers have added writer, editor, and poet Terese Mason Pierre as a special guest of the 84th World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”) that will be held in Anaheim, California from August 27-31, 2026. File 770 has the announcement here: “LAcon V Welcomes Special Guest Terese Mason Pierre”.

(3) TAFF 2026 TAKING NOMINATIONS. The 2026 TransAtlantic Fan Fund race will send a North American delegate to the Berlin Eurocon (MetropolCon, July 2-5) reports Ansible.

Nominations are now open and will close on February 1; voting then runs to April 7. Candidates must find nominators (3 NAm, 2 Euro) and provide a platform of up to 101 words plus $20 bond. More details at the TransAtlantic Fan Fund Unofficial Home.

(4) A RANDOM HOTCHPOTCH OF CLASSIC SF BOOKS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Now, I am unashamedly a bit of a fan of Matt on the @Book Pilled YouTube channel. He has spent the past few years being a digital nomad and makes his living buying stuff, mainly SF books, and then auctioning them online. He does well enough to make a living and travelling quite a bit overseas. His secret seems to be that he seeks out the good but old stuff.

Anyway, the reason I like him is that of the stuff I read his opinions largely overlap with my own. Which means that, personally, I give some credence for his coverage of titles and authors with whom I am less familiar. (But, hey, what do I know?) One thing about Matt is that he recognises when he is wrong. He now feels that he has not credited Harry Harrison as much as he should have. And we get a neat anecdote about Harry nearly became a scriptwriter for a major film director. (This was a tragic tale in that it never happened but – for once – the money was there!)

OK, now we come to his recent book haul. Unlike previous book hauls this is double in length at around an hour long. While this engenders a bit of a putative viewer’s commitment, this enables him to explain some of each book’s history. For example, he warns to avoid the two free Gutenberg translations of Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth as the translators swap characters around, misses out parts of the story and so forth. Authors covered also include: Ballard, Clarke, Moorcock, Zelazny among many others. Among the feast is the anthology Five Odd edited by Conklin which has stories by Asimov and Amis among others. It is interesting because Matt has found zero reviews of this on t’internet: no ratings, no reviews on GoodReads; no ratings, no reviews on Amazon. Barry Malzberg credits Conklin with being one of the most important SF anthologists of his time (mainly the Golden Age). “Most Sci-Fi Books Are Interesting When You Look Closely”.

(5) SATURN AWARDS. The Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films website says the 53rd Annual Saturn Awards will be presented live from Universal City, California in 2026. No other current information is provided.

(6) BELATED BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

November 30, 1937 — Ridley Scott, 88.

By Paul Weimer: Ridley Scott. The prolific director responsible for many of our darker visions of the future.

Thanks to the idiosyncratic way I got to see movies, my first Ridley Scott movie was, in fact, Legend, which I saw in the movie theater. Put aside Tom Cruise as the hero–how can one resist Tim Curry as the satanic Lord of Darkness. I tuckerized him immediately into my AD&D campaign as the big bad at the center of the continent.

I saw Thelma and Louise in the early 1990’s but didn’t quite connect it was the same director. But I did notice that Ridley Scott had directed Blade Runner and Alien (thank you WPIX) and I started to watch the director’s oeuvre specifically. But it would be some years before he started releasing more movies.

And so we come to Gladiator. Is it good history? Not in the least. It gets a lot wrong about Roman history and you don’t need me to tell you that. But it feels right and feels authentic, and it helped create a new boomlet in sword and sandal movies and series for a bit. (The new Gladiator II might be the final end of that burst). And it entertained me, and kept me watching, just as the director’s other works. The same is almost true for me of Kingdom of Heaven. The original cut frustrated me, not only because of the history but because it was missing crucial character and narrative beats. The director’s cut is much more satisfactory and satisfying for me, restoring the vision into something eminently watchable and enjoyable.

Moving forward, we have his rather excellent adaptation of The Martian (helped by Matt Damon’s performance). Scott’s visions remained and remain strong and compelling. I also watched The Last Duel which brings us back to the problems of somewhat questionable history. (But again, back to Matt Damon as his star). And once again, his striking visuals, idiosyncratic directorial style and framing

I have not yet seen House of Gucci or his clearly idiosyncratic Napoleon but perhaps I await a quiet and slow day to pick either of those up and see them for myself.

I haven’t mentioned Prometheus at all to this point, and it’s the Ridley Scott film that frustrates me the most. Visuals and style, it has in spades, even if it seems not to fit in with the rest of the Alien verse. It’s got some interesting characters–but also characters who are, charitably carrying multiple idiot balls–and I am not even talking about the giant rolling wheel of doom and Charlize Theron done wrong.

Maybe one day I will come to terms with Prometheus as a film, as a Ridley Scott film. But not right at the moment.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

December 1, 2003 — Lord of the Rings: Return of the King film (premiered in NZ)

By Paul Weimer: By the time the Return of the King premiered on December 1, 2003 I was no longer living in California, and so did not have access to the Imax screen where I had seen The Two Towers, much to the envy of my friend Scott. But, since I was now living in Minnesota, Scott, his wife and I went to see it together on opening weekend in the U.S (the weekend before Christmas). As an even bigger Tolkien fan than I, it was a moral imperative. But it premiered on December 1, 2003 in New Zealand.

You know the story (although with the extended editions, just what is in The Return of the King the original can be a bit fuzzy). But it is the last (sorry, Hobbit) of the three great Middle-Earth movies, and I (as well as Scott) were eager to see how our favorite scenes from the books were to play out. We were not disappointed. From the fight against the Witch-King, to Shelob, to the gorgeous Byzantine look to Minas Tirith, we were entranced. Sure, we had seen Fellowship, and Two Towers (Scott’s favorite, with the March of the Ents a particularly happy sequence for him). Return of the King looks the best of the three, showing the full evolution of Jackson’s craft and the actors completely and finally in their roles.

Don’t get me wrong, Tolkien addict as he was, afterward, Scott had some nitpicks, much of which I agreed with. The way Gollum “frames” Sam is an unnecessary addition to the book that adds drama in a place that it doesn’t need it. The five seconds of Faramir meeting Eowyn in the Houses of Healing was disappointingly short. Although we saw it in the Mirror of Galadriel, the lack of a real Scouring of the Shire disappointed us. (Remember, Saruman’s death doesn’t actually happen in the original movie — Scott was convinced Saruman was going to come back by the end).

And the movie is a bit long, and suffers from the “false ending” bit over and over. It plays that hand way too much for its own good, with similar music every single time. But that is a lot of nitpicking over a fantastic end to a fantastic trio of films. In our lifetimes, Scott and I got to see a cinematic masterpiece of a trilogy of films based on Lord of the Rings completed in Return of the King. How could we not be deliriously happy with that? I am sure, someday, someone will take another crack at the Lord of the Rings and try to film them. I’d like to see them try to reach the heights of Return of the King and the first two films. Someday.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Baldo’s Grace was an early reader.
Loose Parts plans to cash in.
Six Chix has a scheme for staying employed.
Speed Bump meets man’s best internet friend.
Zen Pencils quotes Stephen Fry.
Pearls Before Swine shows there are some DIY projects about which you should not ask an AI for advice.
xkcd provides a simple Website Task Flowchart.

(9) GETTING IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR. Ephemeral New York cites “The enduring appeal of New York City’s lovely vintage letter boxes and mail chutes”.

… Luckily, one relic of an era when U.S. Postal Service delivery was an important conduit for information and connection endures: the elegant, embossed brass letter boxes in office towers and apartment buildings….

… Their appearance in the early 20th century is due to a patent secured in 1883 by James Goold Cutler. In a world that was increasingly becoming more vertical, his mail chute and letter box allowed people living or working on the upper floors of new buildings to mail letters….

… Fire codes have banned the chutes since the late 1990s, however, with fire officials fearing that the chutes could spread smoke, according to a 2019 U.S. Postal Service news post.

That might explain why most of these boxes are just that, minus the chute that made them so vital to 20th century apartment and office tower dwellers.

(10) WHERE DID THE CATS THAT SLEEP ON SCIENCE ~~FICTION~~ COME FROM? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The origin of the domestic cat (Felis catus) had been thought to be quite ancient.

There have been studies into dog domestication: they seem to have evolved from a population of East Asian wolves that took place before the rise of agriculture, though it could have been a little earlier.

Cat domestication was thought to have taken place over 6,000 years ago. But new research published in the latest edition of Science suggests that cat domestication took place much, much later in the 1st century.

Researchers looked at low- to medium-coverage genomes for 87 ancient, museum, and modern cats (the latter just 17 of the former). As genes mutate slowly with time, it is possible to backtrack and get an estimation when the divergence from the wild population (Felis lybica lybica) took place.

Previous work looked at mitochondrial genomes. This study looked at the genome in cats’ cells’ nuclei. Their findings challenge the commonly held view of a Neolithic introduction of domestic cats to Europe, instead placing their arrival several millennia later. The researchers suggest that more whole genomes be analysed, and to a higher resolution, to get a better picture.

A shorthair domestic cat gazes upward. Domestic cats are nowadays globally distributed, yet analysis of the DNA from ancient remains in Europe and Anatolia suggests that their dispersal by humans started only around 2000 years ago, during the Roman era, probably from North Africa.

The primary research is De Martinio, M., et al (2025) “The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago”. Science, vol. 390, eadt2642.

(11) SEATTLE ON FANAC FANHISTORY ZOOM. Now available for viewing on YouTube, “Seattle Fandom (Pt 1 of 2): John D. Berry, Andy Hooper, Suzanne Tompkins, and Jerry Kaufman (m)”.

This FANAC FanHistory session, November 2025, focuses on Seattle’s fannish history. A prolific and influential fannish center since the 1950s, Seattle has remained a hotbed of fandom ever since. In this recording, John D. Berry, Andy Hooper, Suzanne Tompkins and Jerry Kaufman bring their decades of Seattle experience to not only convey the significance of the region, but to bring to life what living in Seattle fandom has been like. Unfortunately, Gordon Eklund, scheduled to participate, was unable to do so because of last minute technical issues. Our panelists begin at the beginning, with the start of Seattle fandom in 1949, at Bill Austin’s bookstore, a location that now strangely falls within the footprint of the Seattle Convention Center, site of the 2025 World Science Fiction Convention. You’ll learn about Mr. Tank, about Clarion West, the purpose of Potlatch, and the admirable integration of the fan and professional communities, to the benefit of both. From a visit by one of the first traveling ghiants, the Irish John Berry, to affectionate stories of SAPS collations, Blotto Otto, and the Pacific Northwest Review of Books, the enduring energy and vibrant tapestry of Seattle fandom come into focus.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

LAcon V Welcomes Special Guest Terese Mason Pierre

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

LAcon V organizers have added writer, editor, and poet Terese Mason Pierre as a special guest of the 84th World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”) that will be held in Anaheim, California from August 27-31, 2026.

Terese Mason Pierre is an acclaimed Canadian writer who has worked to platform members of equity-deserving communities.

“I am so excited to participate as a special guest this year. This came as a complete surprise to me,” Terese Mason Pierre said. “I hope to use the space I’m given to champion both SFF poets and Canadian BIPOC SFF writers.”

Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is an award-winning Canadian writer and editor whose work has appeared in Uncanny, Fantasy Magazine, Star*Line, Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, and elsewhere online and in print. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Aurora Award, and the Ignyte Award. Her second chapbook, Manifest, won a third-place Elgin Award, and was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, for chapbooks published in Canada. In 2023, she was named a Writer’s Trust Rising Star, and is a winner of Writer’s Trust Journey Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award for short fiction. She has completed residencies at Island Scribe and the Banff Centre.

While she originally wanted to be a pediatrician, Terese has always found a home in creative writing. She studied Bioethics at the University of Toronto, while creating and developing literary arts programming at the Hart House Student Literary and Library Committee—hosting creative writing workshops and organizing panels and events. She continued her education with a Masters Degree in Philosophy from York University, and graduated from a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2025, from the University of Guelph. Currently, she works at the Toronto Public Library, hosting programs for diverse communities.

Terese lives in Toronto and is an active member of her local literary community. She has co-hosted poetry reading series, spoken at conferences and festivals, organized literary events, judged writing contests, facilitated creative writing workshops—including with Clarion West—and mentored emerging writers. She edits for Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal. Since 2018, she has been a Poetry Editor, a Senior Editor and co-Editor-in- Chief. Currently, she serves as Augur’s Chief Programming Officer—leading the creation of programs, events and initiatives—and co-Director of AugurCon, Augur‘s biennial speculative literature conference.

Myth is Terese’s debut poetry collection, from House of Anansi Press, which explores family, island landscapes, love, and memory. She is also the editor of As The Earth Dreams, an anthology of Black Canadian speculative short fiction.

When not writing, working, or editing, Terese plays in four different Dungeons and Dragons campaigns (mostly spellcasters), attends the occasional play or comedy show, bakes when inspired, hosts parties for her friends, and binges TV with her cat, Benjamin.

“World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC”, “Hugo Award”, “Lodestar Award”, the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award Rocket are trademarks of Worldcon Intellectual Property and used by permission.

[Based on a press release.]

a miniature bookcase

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

Let’s celebrate The Universe Box‘s February 3rd release by Tachyon Press! I have opened the universe box that is my life, and will be sharing a piece of it every Monday.

By Michael Swanwick: Atop the Rialto in Venice, I saw a woman dance a spontaneous whirl of joy just for being there. La Serenissima does that to you. You could close your eyes, spin about, snap a photo and the result would be beautiful. I speak from experience.

In New York’s Hudson Valley, a sculptor named Harvey Fite bought a played-out slate mine and began building a stage for his work. He called it Opus 40 after the number of years he calculated it would take to finish it. Eventually, the stage became the art itself. You can walk atop its whorls, rises, and descents. It is a moving experience.

Venice, however, trumps it. The city itself is a single work of art. Citizens, tourists, saints, and scoundrels walk over it every day. There are theaters and bordellos, bookbinders and museums. All of life is present there in its most carnivalesque forms. And in its shop windows…

The Queen of the Adriatic has always been about commerce. Walk into a shop at random and you’ll emerge dazedly clutching something you’d never known you always needed but did. The windows are full of such treasures—but also of one-of-a-kind items not meant for sale but designed to draw you in. On a recent visit, bookcases crafted from cigar boxes were everywhere. They contained miniature books of course but also globes, astrolabes, and whatever else might reasonably find itself on an intellectual’s shelves. Each one a charming fantasy.

One miniature that knocked Marianne for a loop was crafted from the gutted body of a violin.

Marianne being Marianne, it was inevitable that she would decide to create a miniature bookcase herself. She found a place for it among her real-life shelves and scanned the covers of select books from them so the miniatures would be recursive. The result is both delightful and modest.

But every now and then, she passes by a music shop and I can see her thinking: “That Amati—it’s beyond repair, right? Wouldn’t it look great in my library?”

Hugo Award for Poetry Will Be Presented by LAcon V

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Mike Glyer

LAcon V organizers today announced “Best Poem” will be the optional additional category for the 2026 Hugo Awards being presented at the 84th World Science Fiction Convention.

The Hugo Awards, created in 1953, are the most prestigious awards in speculative fiction. Existing Hugo Award categories recognize novels, short stories, films, graphic novels, art, editing, and genre criticism.

“Speculative poetry has a long and storied tradition. Arguably the first works of speculative fiction were epic poems like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad,” LAcon V chair Joyce Lloyd said. “We’re pleased to invite the membership of this Worldcon to nominate and vote on their favorite works of speculative poetry from the past year.”

This will be the second time that a Hugo Award has been presented for poetry. The 2025 Seattle Worldcon also ran it as their optional special category. The winning work was “A War of Words,” by Marie Brennan.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm for the Best Poem category in Seattle,” Hugo Awards administrator Tammy Coxen said. “We felt that running the category for an additional year would help provide data about its long-term viability before the business meeting chooses whether or not to ratify the amendment and add Best Poem to The Hugo Awards as a permanent category.”

The rules for the category are the same as were used in 2025: “Best Poem: A science fiction or fantasy poem of any line length or word count.”

The vote to ratify the Best Poem category, thereby making it a permanent one, will be held at the LACon V business meeting.

Nominations for the Hugo Awards, to be presented at LAcon V, will open in February 2026. To nominate works, including for Best Poem, a person must purchase a membership to LAcon V before January 31, 2026, or be a member of the previous Worldcon. After nominations have closed, the final ballot will be announced, and all members of LAcon V will be able to vote for the winners in each category. Register here to participate.

The Hugo Awards— whose trophies are iconic chrome-plated rocket ships—are named after Hugo Gernsback, a famous magazine editor and founder of Amazing Stories, the first major American SF magazine. Hugo Awards are awarded each year by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) at that year’s Worldcon.

The 84th annual World Science Fiction Convention will be held from August 27-31, 2026, in Anaheim, California. For more information, visit www.lacon.org.

“World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon” and “Hugo Award” are service marks of Worldcon Intellectual Property, a California non-profit corporation managed by the Mark Protection Committee of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society. “LAcon V” copyright © 2025, Southern California Institute for Fan Interests (SCIFI), Inc. All rights reserved.

[Based on a press release.]

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a miniature bookcase

Hugo Award for Poetry Will Be Presented by LAcon V

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