The Kipling Society of the UK – “Promoting the works of Rudyard Kipling” – is taking entries on the subject of the Supernatural for The John McGivering Writing Prize 2026.
First Prize: £350
Second prize: £100
Third Prize: £50
The Competition, funded by the generosity of the late John McGivering, is open to tales of the supernatural which should be also connected, whether directly or obliquely, with Kipling’s writings and/or his life.
The judges are Jan Montefiore, Mary Hamer, and Sarah LeFanu.
Rudyard Kipling, famous for the realism of his fiction, was from first to last a master of the uncanny and of the terrors — often, as in the quotations below, associated with women — shadowing apparently familiar things.
“Kitty,” I cried, “there are poor Mrs. Wessington’s jhampanies turned up again! I wonder who has them now?”
Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last season, and had always been interested in the sickly woman.
“What? Where?” she asked. “I can’t see them anywhere.”
Even as she spoke her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing ’rickshaw. I had scarcely time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had been thin air.
— The Phantom ’Rickshaw (1885)
“There wasn’t ’ardly no one in the streets ’cept the cats. ’Twas ’ot, too! I turned into the gate bold as brass; up de steps I went an’ I ringed the front-door bell. She pealed loud, like it do in an empty house. When she’d all ceased, I ’eard a cheer, like, pushed back on de floor o’ the kitchen. Then I ’eard feet on de kitchen-stairs, like it might ha’ been a heavy woman in slippers. They come up to de stairhead, acrost the hall—I ’eard the bare boards creak under ’em—an’ at de front door dey stopped. I stooped me to the letter-box slit, an’ I says: “Let me take everythin’ bad that’s in store for my man, ’Arry Mockler, for love’s sake.” Then, whatever it was ’tother side de door let its breath out, like, as if it ’ad been holdin’ it for to ’ear better.”
“Nothin’ was said to ye?” Mrs. Fettley demanded.
“Na’un. She just breathed out—a sort of A-ah, like. Then the steps went back an’ downstairs to the kitchen—all draggy—an’ I heard the cheer drawed up again.”
— The Wish House (1926)
The Kipling Society also offers a Competition for Younger Writers aged between 12 and 17years, for stories of supernatural, which should likewise be connected with Kipling’s writings and/or his life, for which the Kipling Society offers a prize of £75, and £25for the runner-up.
(1) DELANY CONSIDERS FATE OF HIS PERSONAL LIBRARY. Samuel Delany told Facebook readers today:
The majority of my personal library, from my apartment… in New York City, is currently in a CubeSmart storage unit.
Once upon a time, I lived in an 8-room apartment with books all up and down the hallway, along with my own little room and library at the very end. From there I went to my daughter’s house in Wynnewood, where there was room for the entire library (it filled their entire basement), but when Dennis and I were kicked out (with an hour to pack) we came to this three-room apartment. Most of my books went into storage, initially a 320+ cardboard cartons filled with literature, philosophy, current thought, and advance copies of my own work and some science fiction.
It’s almost as much money to store my books as it is to pay my rent, and I don’t even get to read them.
Soon, I am planning to sell my collection to a corporate book reseller. If anyone has any suggestions for a better fate, I’d love to hear it.
(2) CONSEQUENCES OF EMPATHY. Christopher Lockett has “Some Thoughts on Pluribus”. Beware spoilers. (I don’t think this excerpt gives away anything that isn’t evident from the trailer.)
…As a result of the joining, all members of the collective have access to the sum total of human knowledge and, further, can perform such sophisticated actions as flying airplanes or doing surgery. In other words, if someone somewhere knows something, everybody else knows it; similarly, the skill one person has is now held in common.
What’s more, the joining renders all its members incapable of violence or doing any sort of harm to any living thing. This detail is quite reminiscent of Joe Haldeman’s novel Forever Peace (1998), which envisions a form of future combat in which elite soldiers operate battle bots remotely by being connected mentally—they virtually inhabit the machines along with the rest of their squad, with whom they share a mind link, such that they can operate as one without the need for vocalizing orders or intention. All such soldiers are limited to two-week tours at a time, ostensibly to protect their mental health. But the main characters discover that the real reason is because anybody who has spent more than two weeks connected to other humans loses the capacity to do harm. Too much time inhabiting the minds of others, in other words, engenders a radical empathy that removes the instinct and ability for violence….
…So far this scam followed what I’d read in Strauss’ Writer Beware report. However, everything took a new turn when Speier offered to let me see the Discord where their so-called community interacted with each other and discussed books.
After receiving an invite to the Supper Books readers Discord, I quickly started exploring and screenshotting everything….
…I’ve redacted the names of other authors in any screenshots I’ve shared. However, one author who said I could quote him is the environmental author David Sobel. Sobel came into the Discord before I did and interacted with the users for a while before leaving. He later told me he didn’t send the scammers any money.
When I asked Sobel what convinced him it was a scam, he said, “The organizer suggested that the readers she was convening were all enthusiastic about the book of mine we were going to talk about. When I got on the chat, it was clear that none of the ‘readers’ knew a thing about the book.”
This ties in with what I realized each time Melissa Speier and the other users talked about my book. While Speier’s initial email appears to be from someone who read We Who Hunt Alexanders, a closer look shows that the details about my book are both specific and generic along with saying a lot without saying much at all. This is a pattern seen frequently with AI-generated copy. It appears someone used a program like ChatGPT to write the remarks about my book….
(5) FREE READ: HOLLY HUNTER PROFILE. We linked to this a few days ago. We now have a gift link that bypasses the paywall: “Holly Hunter Reaches for the Stars” in the New York Times.
A new £50,000 writing prize that allows readers to select the shortlist from submitted manuscripts – and rewards them with cash prizes for their involvement – has been launched by the publishing platform Libraro, in partnership with Hachette UK.
The Libraro prize aims to “sidestep the traditional barricades of the book industry”, according to organisers. Writers upload full manuscripts to the Libraro platform, where readers champion their favourite entries to create a shortlist of six books.
It is open to adult and crossover YA fiction written in English and is designed to give readers a role in discovering new writing talent.
The overall winner will receive a £50,000 prize package from Libraro – comprising £30,000 and an additional £20,000 towards marketing the finished book – alongside a book deal with Hachette UK. Two additional reader prizes of £10,000 each will also be awarded: one to the reader who referred the winning author to the platform, and another to the reader who engages most actively with submissions….
…The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over, worldwide, regardless of previous publishing history or professional representation. Entrants will have the chance to receive constructive feedback from readers, while shortlisted authors will be given professional support to help them package and format their manuscripts before they are assessed by the judges….
…Entries open on 19 January and close on 15 February, with reader engagement running from 19 February to 20 March. The shortlist will be announced on 21 April, and the winner revealed on 13 May.
Last fall the Metropolitan Opera debuted a new opera, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” composed by Michael Bates, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, who adapted Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Now, The Met Live is giving audiences a chance to see a filmed version of this production in cinemas on Jan. 24, with encore presentations on Jan. 26.
The opera, which is performed in English, is ambitious and entertaining. It incorporates themes of belonging, art, and trauma into a story that has the Jewish Joe Kavalier (baritone Andrzej Filończyk) escaping Prague in 1939 via a coffin to go live with his cousin, Sam Clay (tenor Miles Mykkanen), in Brooklyn. Joe has left his teenage sister Sarah (soprano Lauren Snouffer) behind, but he promises to send for her and their parents.
In New York, Joe and Sam create “The Escapist” comic book featuring a superhero who fights fascism. It becomes wildly successful, and a radio production of “The Escapist” features actor Tracy Bacon (baritone Edward Nelson), who falls in love with the equally smitten Sam. Meanwhile, Joe meets Rosa Saks (mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce), who runs the Transatlantic Rescue Agency, which helps Jews sail to America from war-torn Europe. As the romances develop, a tragedy occurs and, for different reasons, Joe and Tracy enlist to go fight overseas, leaving Rosa and Sam back home….
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” is an impressive-looking production. The sets and visual design (by 59 Studios) are imaginative; some images are seen being drawn in “real time.” Various comic book panels from “The Escapist” also come to life on a big screen like giant Roy Lichtenstein canvases. There is even an actor playing the caped and masked superhero who dances and battles evildoers on stage.
In addition, there is a fabulous set piece of the radio play, complete with a foley artist, and a later sequence of another comic book character floating down from the sky that has a dreamlike quality. The opera really hits its stride with these wondrous moments, and the period-themed music heightens the energy of these scenes. While an extended sequence in Act II, set in the Western Front, is quite elaborate, and features dozens of soldiers on a giant moving stage, that episode tends to be a bit repetitive narratively and musically, which is a drawback….
(8) WILLIAM GOWEN (1957-2026). Seattle fan William “Lile” Gowen died on January 5. Karen G. Anderson made the announcement on Facebook.
…Some of us knew Lile as one of the members of the concom for the Foolscap Convention; some of us knew him as an avid film buff, art collector, and baseball enthusiast. Lile was a gracious host for many of the events benefitting the Clarion West science fiction writing workshop and the Seattle area science fiction community in general.
His death was a surprise. He’d been recovering from an illness suffered this summer….
With solemn hearts, we announce the passing of William Carlile Gowen of Seattle, Washington, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose presence will be deeply missed, having departed on January 5, 2026 at the age of 68. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
January 19, 1932 — Richard Lester, 94
Serious film and I don’t get along — give me a good, fun film and I’m very, very happy. Thus you’re getting American-born but eventually British-resident film director Richard Lester for the Birthday this Scroll. Pop the bubbly and dig into the chocolate cake, let’s get started.
Richard Lester in 1967.
A variety show he produced caught the attention of Peter Sellers who got Lester’s assistance in getting The Goon Show from the BBC Home Service onto ITV in the London area as The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d. It lasted but six episodes. Six insane episodes mind you.
His second film after It’s Trad, Dad which is decidedly not genre was The Mouse on the Moon, a sequel to The Mouse That Roared (which he was not involved in at all.) It was by Michael Pertwee, brother of a certain actor we know from Doctor Who. Quite silly it was.
He directed The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, a late Fifties sketch comedy short film directed by him and Peter Sellers. So why mention it? It’s because it was a favorite of John Lennon which led to Lester’s being hired to direct A Hard Day’s Night and then Help! You know which film is genre, so I needn’t say so.
Next up is The Three Musketeers (which I didn’t know was also known as The Three Musketeers (The Queen’s Diamonds) which is an interesting title). Fascinatingly George MacDonald Fraser wrote the screenplay. Lester shot The Four Musketeers right after this film.
He later reunited most of the Three Musketeers cast to film The Return of the Musketeers with the only notable cast member not present being Raquel Welch.
Lester was fond of swashbuckler films, so it was only natural that he decided to direct a Flashman film. Royal Flash was based off the second of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser which now gives me the link to him writing the Musketeer screenplays. Cool. Very cool. And naturally Fraser wrote the screenplay here.
(A digression. I mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again. Kage Baker adored Flashman and this film as well. She told me several times in the last year before her passing on that she was planning on writing a Flashman novel but of course never did, sadly. There are some Flashman references in her Company series, she told me.)
Then there was Robin and Marian, which along with along with Richard Carpenter’s Robin of Sherwood, I hold to be the finest representations of Robin Hood ever done. The script was by James Goldman, writer of The Lion in Winter, and as you know the leads were performed by Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. Perfect. Truly perfect.
Superman II was a great success after he reshot almost all the footage Richard Donner had already shot, some three-quarters of the projected film. Ouch. (That was released as Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.) Unlike this film, Superman III directed by him would be both a critical and box office failure.
His last film before retirement though not genre, I’ll note as it’s a great film called Get Back, the thirty-three-year old concert film about The Paul McCartney World Tour of 1989–1990. Seventeen of the twenty-three songs he performs are by the Beatles.
Would you eat a smoky spider flavour Monster Munch? What about a Bovril crisp, cooked up to celebrate the release of Back to the Future? Then there’s hedgehog flavour – and even a Wallace and Gromit corn snack designed to capture the unique taste of moon cheese, which the duo rocketed off to collect in A Grand Day Out.
All these salty, crunchy and perhaps even tasty snacks are celebrated in UK Crisp Packets 1970-2000, a 140-page compendium that delves into the colourful, often strange and occasionally wild world of crisp packet design. The book will come as a heavy hit of nostalgia for many people, featuring various childhood favourites – Chipsticks, Frazzles, Snaps – along with the lesser known and the rare.
You’ll find Dennis the Menace bacon and baked bean flavour alongside Golden Wonder roast turkey and stuffing and Sonic the Hedgehog salt and vinegar. There are long-gone regional brands from Penryn, Blackpool and Wigan, along with a whole heap of TV and film special editions, including the Spice Girls, Thunderbirds, Zig and Zag, Dr Who, The Mask and Jurassic Park.
The book is by a 43-year-old artist going by the name of Chris Packet, who has amassed quite an archive. It is nothing if not eclectic, the designs it showcases ranging from straightforward to inspired to bizarre. There’s union jack-clad cheese and onion to commemorate the 1981 royal wedding and even innuendo-laden comic strips that recall smutty seaside postcards. The Dandy’s Beryl the Peril fronts a bag of sausage and tomato….
Heather Knight has covered the quirky side of San Francisco for many years, but this is her first alligator funeral.
This funeral traded hymns for a brass band, somber pallbearers for dancing drag queens, and black suits and dresses for reptile costumes. There were no platters of cheese and crackers, but there was a nearly life-size loaf of sourdough shaped like the deceased.
In San Francisco, people do things differently — including the memorial service on Sunday to mourn the passing of Claude, an albino alligator who entertained crowds at the California Academy of Sciences for years by not doing much at all.
San Francisco has long embraced those who stand out from the crowd, and Claude certainly did. He was pure white, had pink eyes that did not see well, stretched 10 feet long, weighed 300 pounds and was so quiet and still that many first-time visitors to the science museum thought he was a statue.
A few times over the years, Claude shocked his admirers with a roar — and on Sunday, the city roared its love and appreciation back at him. He died last month of liver cancer at 30, a ripe age for an albino alligator, and thousands turned out to a concourse near the museum in Golden Gate Park for his jubilant memorial service….
(13) LITTLE RED DOTS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The latest Nature cover story may solve the little red dot (LRD) mystery!
Back in 2022, in its first two weeks of operation, the James Webb space telescope detected little red dots (LRDs) and no-one knew what they were. These LRDs seemed to date from the early Universe, around 600 million years after the Big Bang.
Two theories emerged: could they be young, unexpectedly star-filled galaxies or, alternatively, anomalously massive black holes that were accreting glowing gas?
A new analysis of the light from LRDs now supports the latter scenario but indicates that the black holes are hidden behind a thick curtain of gas, which made them seem more massive in earlier analyses than they really are. The British, Swedish and Swiss based astrophysicists note that the hydrogen line emissions in the spectra of LRDs are particularly broad, which indicates that the glowing gas is moving at velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Such speeds suggest an active galactic nucleus in which gas surrounding a supermassive black hole heats up and glows.
Now, the bigger the black hole the greater the gas speed and so the greater the hydrogen line broadening. The problem is that the broadening is so great that it suggests that the black hole is the mass of an entire galaxy and not just its nucleus. So, are LRDs galaxies or black holes?
The hydrogen line spectra are consistent with a dot being bright object surrounded by dense clouds of ionised material. Here, if the researchers’ model is correct, the brightness of a dot represents more than 250 billion Suns, but this collection of stars was less than one-tenth of a parsec across, which is a fraction of a light year and much, much smaller than a galaxy (which can be one or two hundred thousand light years across). The only possible explanation could be that an LRD is a dense, compact object that is converting the gravitational potential energy of in-falling gas into light. Such an object would be a really big, or supermassive, black hole such as the ones found at the hearts of galaxies but that this is surrounded by gas through which light generated by some of the gas in-falling itself gets altered into the way the hydrogen lines are seen.
[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Jerry Kaufman, Jeffrey Smith, Jason Sanford, Lise Andreasen, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The committee bidding to hold the 2028 Worldcon in Brisbane, Australia has revealed a new logo designed to honor the Indigenous peoples on whose land the convention would be held.
Bid Co-Chairs Random Jones and Vix Richardson made this statement:
The Committee of the Worldcon Brisbane 2028 bid acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians. We recognise their cultures, histories, and diversity and their deep connection to the lands, waters, and seas of Australia and the Torres Strait.
We acknowledge the Yuggera people and the Turrbal people as the Traditional Custodians of Meanjin (Brisbane). We pay our respects to Yuggera and Turrbal Elders past, present, and emerging.
Always was, Always will be Aboriginal land.
We’re delighted to show you our shiny new logo – which connects our past and many-storied future in one compelling image. Tori-Jay Mordey is an established First Nation, Indigenous Australian artist and illustrator, with shared Torres Strait Islander and English heritage. She has created this beautiful image which uses Brisbane’s indigenous name, Meanjin [pronounced “MEE-an-jin”].
Tori-Jay Mordey, First Nation, Indigenous Australian artist and illustrator
Tori-Jay has, we think, created something beautiful and possibly unique. Her logo highlights the relationship between self and country held by First Nations Australians, and explores time, space, and land across speculative-fiction genres. In future, we’ll be using both our Brisbane in 28 logo and our Meanjin in 28 logo.
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: I live in a house thronged with masks and skulls. It’s a wonder nobody has ever commented on this. The masks are, mostly, mine. Marianne, being a biologist, is the source of the skulls. They range from that of a green heron to that of a cave bear. Some, the gifts of our son and his peers, are fantasy skulls. One is a 3-D print of a Yellowstone wolf’s. They are bought and found and given. Some I could not tell how they came into our possession.
This particular skull was that of a black bear, which are generally benign and unlikely to come after you unless you threaten it or its cubs. So it’s a pity people hunt them.
Once, long ago, I went to a convention in mid-state New York with Gardner Dozois, Susan Casper, and Jack and Jeanne Dann. Jack and Jeanne were in the front of the compact rental and the rest of us were squeezed into the back. You must picture Gardner and me holding ourselves the prissy way uptight straight guys do when their bodies are shoved against each other.
It was a drizzly, rainy day, the sky was gray, and it was the opening day of hunting season. Cars kept passing us with large animals—deer mostly, but some bears too—strapped to their hoods. Blood seeped from the trophies’ nostrils. The ride was interminable and in the front seat Jack and Jeanne were arguing bitterly and endlessly because Jack believed that the car’s air conditioner removed the smoke from his cigar before it could reach any of us and Jeanne believed (correctly) that it did not.
In mid-argument, Jack threw his arm over the back of the seat, turned, grinned around his cigar, and exclaimed, “Me and my buddies! It doesn’t get any better than this.”
…In automation theory, a “centaur” is a person who is assisted by a machine. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete.
A reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.
For example, an Amazon delivery driver, who sits in a cabin surrounded by AI cameras that monitor the driver’s eyes and take points off if the driver looks in a proscribed direction, and monitors the driver’s mouth because singing is not allowed on the job, and rats the driver out to the boss if they do not make quota.
The driver is in that van because the van cannot drive itself and cannot get a parcel from the curb to your porch. The driver is a peripheral for a van, and the van drives the driver, at superhuman speed, demanding superhuman endurance.
Obviously, it’s nice to be a centaur, and it’s horrible to be a reverse centaur. There are lots of AI tools that are potentially very centaurlike, but my thesis is that these tools are created and funded for the express purpose of creating reverse centaurs, which none of us want to be.
But like I said, the job of a science-fiction writer is to do more than think about what the gadget does, and drill down on who the gadget does it for and who the gadget does it to. Tech bosses want us to believe that there is only one way a technology can be used. Mark Zuckerberg wants you to think that it is technologically impossible to have a conversation with a friend without him listening in. Tim Cook wants you to think that it is impossible for you to have a reliable computing experience unless he gets a veto over which software you install and without him taking 30 cents out of every dollar you spend. Sundar Pichai wants you to think that it is for you to find a webpage unless he gets to spy on you from asshole to appetite…
…Take radiology: there is some evidence that AI can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss. Look, I’ve got cancer. Thankfully, it’s very treatable, but I’ve got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible.
Let’s say my hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: “Hey folks, here’s the deal. Today, you’re processing about 100 X-rays per day. From now on, we’re going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you’ve missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you’re only processing 98 X-rays per day. That’s fine, we just care about finding all those tumors.”
If that’s what they said, I’d be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market’s bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: “Look, you fire nine out of 10 of your radiologists, saving $20m a year. You give us $10m a year, and you net $10m a year, and the remaining radiologists’ job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed – and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it’s catastrophically wrong.
“And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist’s fault, because they are the ‘human in the loop’. It’s their signature on the diagnosis.”
This is a reverse centaur, and it is a specific kind of reverse centaur: it is what Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink”. The radiologist’s job is not really to oversee the AI’s work, it is to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes.
This is another key to understanding – and thus deflating – the AI bubble. The AI can’t do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job. This is key because it helps us build the kinds of coalitions that will be successful in the fight against the AI bubble.
If you are someone who is worried about cancer, and you are being told that the price of making radiology too cheap to meter, is that we are going to have to rehouse America’s 32,000 radiologists, with the trade-off that no one will ever be denied radiology services again, you might say: “Well, OK, I’m sorry for those radiologists, and I fully support getting them job training or UBI or whatever. But the point of radiology is to fight cancer, not to pay radiologists, so I know what side I’m on.”
AI hucksters and their customers in the C-suites want the public on their side. They want to forge a class alliance between AI deployers and the people who enjoy the fruits of the reverse centaurs’ labor. They want us to think of ourselves as enemies to the workers.
Now, some people will be on the workers’ side because of politics or aesthetics. But if you want to win over all the people who benefit from your labor, you need to understand and stress how the products of the AI will be substandard. That they are going to get charged more for worse things. That they have a shared material interest with you….
It was with some consternation that Mike faced the end of his beloved online fanzine, File Numbers, as the use of Alienated Imbecility taxed the ecosystem beyond its limits.
Atlanta had fallen first, as the mighty machines chugged away answering questions about baseball scores in 1923 and the water supply ran out. Desperate Atlanteans fled the ruins of the city for the possible salvation of a simpler life in the country and a return to pre-digital technology. Los Angeles was next to go when the entertainment industry was forced to return to live theater and lemonade made with in the theater, along with corn popped over fires made from burning cyberpads.
Finally, in a move of great desperation, Mike decided to beat them by joining them. He didn’t have a mimeograph, and they had not made sulfide paper in many years. But there was a booming industry in making paper from bamboo, which could grow sixty feet in only two weeks. And the Dictatorship had not succeeded in totally destroying the Post Office.
Mike thought back to the beauty of cursive writing, which he had learned in his early youth, when the schools still taught such things instead of Consumer Obedience: and found a small, local shop that still offered such antique devices.
He bought a pen, and some ink. Perhaps one still could change history…
An Alabama public library has lost state funding after refusing to move several books, including The Handmaid’s Tale, out of its teen section. The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure to comply with the board’s rules requiring books deemed “sexually explicit” be relocated to the adult section. Titles flagged by the board include The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin. Fairhope Library Board Chair Randal Wright argued that parents—not the state—should decide what their children read, saying it is “not your job to make that decision.” Board member Jay Snider added that it is unrealistic to suggest teenagers have not already been exposed to the language in question. Since the dispute began in late 2024, the library has raised more than $100,000 in community donations. The Handmaid’s Tale has been a particular focus of anger from supporters of President Donald Trump, partly because the Hulu adaptation.
Swing open the saloon doors: There’s a new “Power Broker” in town. For surely the story of the publishing behemoth Random House, told through its charismatic co-founder Bennett Cerf, is as worthy of crossing the thousand-page mark as the story of how Robert Moses bulldozed New York. Books are just as much part of the city’s infrastructure as highways and housing developments.
And this one, “Nothing Random,” by the veteran Publishers Weekly reporter Gayle Feldman, is as delightful as it is hefty. You don’t want to stick the chronicles of the pipe-twiddling, Cheshire cat-grinning Cerf and his circle on a shelf for clout during Zoom calls, but plonk them on plates for dinner at eight.
Bonus: Doubles as booster cushion!
Cerf, an inveterate prankster and consummate promoter, would probably be tickled by the idea of this big, beautiful biography — long enough in the making that its distinguished acquiring editor died of old age — under guests’ rumps.
Yes, Random House pushed the first authorized U.S. edition of “Ulysses” through court; nabbed Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” which won the National Book Award; oversaw Gertrude Stein’s uproarious American lecture tour and William Faulkner’s shaky trip to the Nobel Prize. It was built on the classic backlist of the Modern Library, bankrolled by the best sellers of James Michener and Ayn Rand and burnished by some of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights and poets.
Cerf chafed at losing “Lolita” (a prudish deputy had threatened to quit); charmed authors (escorting Eugene O’Neill to a Yankees game right after the birth of his own second son); and took principled stands on the bonkers politics of Rand and Ezra Pound.
But he was famous himself for appearing as one of the evening-clothed panelists, “Sunday night royalty,” on the popular CBS game show “What’s My Line?,” a household name back when a man’s home was his castle and Nielsen and Gallup the imperial cavalry….
…Sometimes scratching this itch yielded an ugly rash, as when Jessica Mitford exposed one of his shadier concerns, the Famous Writers School mail-order course, in The Atlantic in 1970.
Cerf died a year later, at 73, and his star faded quickly as Random House’s habitual mergers and acquisitions — including of the higher-browed rival, Knopf — swelled to its current state of mega-conglomeration….
…Feldman thus had a biographer’s dream task: to reconstruct the life of someone who was both very important and largely forgotten, a prolific correspondent who kept copious action-oriented diaries and scrapbooks. Was Cerf a lightweight — “a dentist,” as Norman Mailer once spat — or so kinetic he could not be fixed? Was he a fool or wiser than us all at the project of living?…
(5) REALLY HELPFUL GOOGLE SEARCH TRICK. [Item by Andrew Porter.] If you type -ai at the end of a Google search it won’t show ai results.
About two years ago, Google practically force-fed artificial intelligence to the masses when it began showing A.I.-generated responses to people’s questions at the top of search results. Now the company is taking a similar tack by adding A.I. into another ubiquitously used service, Google Mail.
Google this month began rolling out a suite of new tools relying on generative A.I., the technology driving chatbots, to help users manage their bloated inboxes and speed up the process of writing email. Some of the features are free, while others require paying a subscription.
Gmail users can now look up emails by typing a question, such as “What’s the name of the job recruiter I met last month?” Google is also testing a new type of inbox, set for release later this year, that automatically pulls together a to-do list based on tasks discussed inside emails. In addition, Google unveiled tools to streamline writing, including an automatic proofreader and response generator…
…All of this, of course, has implications for privacy. To make the new features work, Gemini, Google’s A.I. assistant, needs access to a user’s entire inbox. The company insists that while Gemini systems analyze our emails, there are protections in place so that its employees do not read them….
The pair have created The Secret World of Roald Dahl, a doc podcast series that peels back the secret spy life of the beloved children’s author, revealing “a life far stranger than fiction.”
The first episode is dropping on Monday (January 19). Created and hosted by Aaron Tracy, the story will explore how the author of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘The BFG’, ‘Matilda’ and many other classic children’s books spent a period of his life as a spy for MI6, along with his personal relationships, creative failures and other experiences that shaped him….
…“Roald Dahl played a huge role in our childhoods, but most people have no idea he lived one of the noisiest lives of his century,” said Tracy. “He was a fighter pilot, a British spy for MI6, a struggling screenwriter, the husband of an Oscar winner, a writer for The New Yorker, and an amateur neuroscientist who saved thousands of lives before he finally found his voice as a children’s author at 45. iHeart and Imagine have been dream collaborators to help reveal these hidden chapters of Dahl’s life and explore the complicated, controversial person behind the stories.”….
…Newspaper comics’ decline began with size reduction during the second World War. Newsprint was rationed and recycling was encouraged. With few exceptions, former full-page Sunday strips went to half or third pages. Some newspapers, like the St. Louis, Missouri Post-Dispatch, reduced their Sunday comic-strips to fourth, fifth and sixth pages; they chopped and stacked panels and crammed as many features as one page could hold.
Daily comics, once published in five or six-column widths, halved that luxurious size as their hold on the public waned. In the first half of the 20th century, comics were a selling point of newspapers. All age groups and social classes read and enjoyed them. The acquisition of Blondie or Dick Tracy in your local paper was ballyhooed. Hefty Sunday papers were wrapped in their color comics section; its arrival made a grand thud on doorsteps. Comics made a difference. Adults read them with glee; kids laid wall-eyed on their living-room floors, pages spread open as they took in the color and imagery.
They were also disposable, like the rest of the daily paper; only oddballs saved them. Many of those people, like Walker, became professional cartoonists. Their work, influenced by the material they absorbed in their youth, kept the flame alive and added something new to the mix.
It took Peanuts a few years to win a wide audience. I find the first several years of the strip fascinating. Its bleak, sarcastic vibe must have felt shocking and unsettling in the first half of the ‘50s. Walker’s work always aimed to please the mass audience. Peanuts gave the reader pause; Beetle Bailey induced the ideal boffo laff, like Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy….
(8) ROGER ALLERS (1949-2026). Disney animation filmmaker Roger Allers died this weekend. Deadline paid tribute:
Roger Allers, the Disney Animation filmmaker known for The Lion King, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and more, has died. He was 76.
Bossert noted that Allers got his start at Disney as part of the storyboard team on Tron (1982), also working on … The Little Mermaid (1989) before becoming head of story on Beauty and the Beast (1991)….
…Allers relocated to Los Angeles to work on the 1980 animated feature Animalympics with director Steven Lisberger, before working on Tron. He also spent time in Tokyo while working on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989).
Upon his 1985 return to LA, Allers got his start with Disney as a storyboard artist on films like Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under and The Prince and The Pauper, before serving as a co-director with Rob Minkoff on The Lion King (1994), earning them the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy. Allers also wrote The Lion King‘s 1998 Tony-winning Broadway adaptation.
Also during his Disney tenure, Allers worked on The Emperor’s New Groove, Lilo & Stitch and The Little Matchgirl….
One of the cuddliest holidays around has to be National Winnie the Pooh Day, celebrated on the birthday of author A. A. Milne who was born in 1882.
It’s one special anniversary fans just can’t bear to miss! Every year, the occasion is marked with events such as teddy bear picnics, featuring plenty of honey on the menu….
Learn Fun Facts About Winnie the Pooh
Brush up on some trivia in honor of National Winnie the Pooh Day! Check out and share a few of these fun facts for starters:
The name Winnie came from Milne’s own teddy bear, Winnie
The “Pooh” part was from the nickname of a swan Milne had met on holiday
The story and adventures of Winnie the Pooh are set in the ancient Ashdown Forest of East Sussex, which was near Milne’s home
Some of the original plush toys are on display at the New York Public Library…
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
January 18, 1953 — Pamela Dean, 73.
By Paul Weimer: One of the legends of Minneapolis fantasy writing, Pamela Dean’s work first came to my attention in the same flush of attention that brought novels such as War for the Oaks to my attention. From my perch in New York, work by people like Bull and Dean and Brust (among others) enlightened me to the fact that the Twin Cities were a hotbed of fantasy and science fiction writing.
I started reading her with her classic Tam Lin, which I picked up not long after the aforementioned Bull novel. (I was on a kick to read novels set in Minnesota at that point, you seem, especially by this community). It’s an excellent adaptation and exploration of the Scottish-English story. You know the one. Young man taken by a Queen or noble of Faerie, and the titular Tam Lin must thus be rescued by the love of his life, Janet. You can see the appeal, it is an empowering fantasy that puts a woman in a forward, protagonist position. Since the original reels and songs, it’s been adapted many times by many authors. Dean’s version has the story take place, predictably, of course, in Minnesota, setting it at Blackrock College.
But it is the Secret Country trilogy that I think of as her best work, or at any rate my favorite. It’s a conceit that was not new to her, as far as I am aware, it dates back to Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series. The idea that a group of people, playing a game with and imagining a fantasy world, find themselves transported into the realm of the very game that they thought was fiction. The idea is the same, but the Secret country is on the brink of war, there’s a dragon afoot, and so there is far more urgency and threat to the realm than wandering about as in Rosenberg’s series. It is one of the classic portal fantasies into a realm you think you already know.
I’ve gotten to meet Pamela Dean many times at local cons. She might even be able to pick me out of a line up. Happy birthday, Pamela!
The arrival in Gotham City of Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face, is rarely without consequence in Batman sagas. Tommy Lee Jones’ shrieking, neon-splashed Batman Forever iteration turned the character into a dissociative identity slot machine, endlessly pulling its own lever, while Billy Dee Williams’ take in 1989’s Batman was a promise of future ruin. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the downfall of Aaron Eckhart’s crusading district attorney signalled the dangers of placing too much faith in the moral resilience of a single individual, especially in a city where the very idea of justice is already under existential strain.
With the news this week cautiously announced in the Hollywood Reporter that Sebastian Stan will be playing Dent in Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated forthcoming sequel to The Batman, it’s quite possible the new episode will be less interested in the masked theatrics of the 20th-century big screen caped crusader, and more in the idea that the very concept of justice is about to slowly disintegrate….
On January 17, 1944,(82 years ago today) Pvt. Rodger Young was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on July 31, 1943, New Georgia in the Solomon Islands….
Johnny Rico serves aboard the Rodger Young in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. The call for troopers and sailors to board the ship is “The Ballad of Rodger Young”. The call for deployed troopers to leave the combat zone was the same song.
There are a few versions on YouTube. The full ballad is long, so most of the sung versions are at least a little abridged. Jim Reeves – The Ballad Of Roger Young.
The most prominent photo of Rodger Young has him wearing Sergeant’s stripes. A week before the combat action for which he would be posthumously be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Young realized that his hearing had gotten so bad that he couldn’t really hear. Rather than lead a squad in that condition, he requested demotion and that he stay with his squad.
A week after that, he found himself wounded and in a position to approach and assault a Japanese pillbox that held a machine gun team that had his unit pinned down. He crawled forward and tossed a series of grenades into the pillbox. His action allowed his unit to retreat and reform. It also cost him his life.
(14) PLANETARY COLLISION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Reported in Nature, a paper that appeared in Science before Christmas.
Astronomers have seen the aftermath of two planetary pile-ups in the same turbulent star system — providing potential insights into how planets form.
Observations from the early 2000s indicated that Fomalhaut, a star 7.7 parsecs (25 light years) from Earth, was orbited by an object that looked like a dusty planet. But subsequent observations revealed that the bright spot was fading, suggesting that it was a dispersing dust cloud.
Paul Kalas at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have used the Hubble Space Telescope to make further observations of the Fomalhaut system. They found that the original object had almost disappeared — and that a second cloud of reflective dust had formed elsewhere.
The most likely explanation, say the authors, is that both the original and most-recent observations show the fallout of collisions between rocky bodies called planetesimals, which are often thought of as the building blocks of planets. This is the first time these impacts have been observed directly in another solar system. Studying other planetesimal smashes could help researchers to understand the dynamics of planet formation.
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Heated Wizardry” from Saturday Night Live. By substituting quidditch for hockey, “A trailer introduces a Harry Potter television series with a heated twist.”
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Dann, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]
Mythic Legions:War of the Aetherblade Attila Leossyr II and Gorgo Aetherblade II Two-Pack from Four Horsemen Studios
By Cora Buhlert: Today I’m reviewing a new addition to my collection, the Mythic LegionsWar of the Aetherblade Attila Leossyr and Gorgo Aetherblade two-pack from Four Horsemen Studios.
Four Horsemen Studios was founded by the toy designers Eric Treadaway, H. Eric “Cornboy” Mayse, Jim Preziosi and Christopher Dahlberg, who met while working at McFarlane Toys in the 1990s and eventually decided to form their own company. The Four Horsemen are legends in the action figure design world and work as freelance designers for many toy companies, though they also produce their own toylines — Mythic Legions, Cosmic Legions and Figura Obscura.
Mythic Legions is a fantasy toyline and offers wizards, knights, skeleton warriors, elves, dwarves, vampires, ogres, demons, monsters as well as horses and other mounts. The toyline also has a rather complicated backstory. Mythic Legions takes place in a world called Mythoss, which is under siege by four factions of villains, which roughly correspond to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, pestilence, hunger and death. Every villainous faction has an opposing heroic faction and they all battle it out for the fate of Mythoss. There are also some characters who stand outside these factions and follow their own path.
That said, most collectors aren’t overly interested in the Mythic Legions storyline, but mainly collect them because they are gorgeously designed fantasy figures that fit in well with other six/seven inch scale toylines and because Mythic Legions figures are also designed to be highly customisable. As for myself, I started buying Mythic Legions figures to fill in perceived gaps in my Masters of the Universe action figure collection and to stand in for characters that don’t have a regular figure. The first Mythic Legions figures I bought were skeleton warriors, because you can always use skeletons. Eventually, I also started buying Mythic Legions figures that appealed to me visually. As for the backstories of the characters, I keep what I like and ignore what I don’t and make up my own stories.
The subject of today’s review, the Mythic Legions:War of the AetherbladeAttila Leossyr and Gorgo Aetherblade two-pack, is a set I bought because I liked the way the figures look. This particular two-pack was originally released as part of a Kickstarter campaign for a video game called Mythic Legions Tactics: War of the Aetherblade, though the figures were also available to non-backers via online and offline collectibles stores. I don’t know anything about the video game itself and some googling revealed that the game has apparently been cancelled and that backers were refunded. But even if the video game never came out, we still got some gorgeous action figures out of it.
So let’s take a look at the set. The regular Mythic Legions packaging is not overly impressive, but perfectly serviceable. Since this is a two-pack, it comes in an oversized window box, showcasing the figures and accessories within. The front also features the Mythic Legions logo, the names of the characters and some artwork of flaming rocks. The back of the box features a brief bio of the characters, the logo of the Mythic Legions Tactics game and what appears to be screenshots from the proposed video game. On the side, you have more artwork of a burning tower as well as some more information about the characters and their world.
I said above that most collectors aren’t overly interested in the backstory of the Mythic Legions characters. However, these two characters are actually very important to the overall mythology as leaders of two of the main factions. Both Attila and Gorgo were originally released early on in the very first wave of Mythic Legions figures and have long since been discontinued. As a result, both figures have become very expensive on the aftermarket, so Four Horsemen Studios decided to release these updated versions as a two-pack.
Gorgo Aetherblade is the general of the Legion of Arethyr, an evil army made up of demons, orks, goblins and the occasional evil human or dwarf. As for what species Gorgo himself is, no one knows, since no one has ever seen his face. Gorgo and his army serve Arethyr, the god of war, who is a giant fiery demon riding a flaming demon horse. Gorgo wields the Aetherblade, a cursed black soul-stealing sword that was clearly inspired by Elric of Melniboné’s cursed blade Stormbringer. The Aetherblade can also be used to bring Arethyr back from wherever he has been banished.
Attila Leossyr is the King of Leandor and leader of the Army of Leodysseus, a force established to battle the Legion of Arethyr. Most members of the Army of Leodysseus are humans, though they also have a few dwarves and Leodysseus, the legendary godlike character after whom the faction is named, is a lion. Attila is a popular and charismatic leader, even though he theoretically should never have become king at all. For Attila’s older brother Attlus was originally the heir apparent to the throne of Leandor and the leadership of the Army of Leodysseus. However, Attlus suddenly renounced his claim to the throne for reasons unknown and left Leandor to live as a half-naked barbarian in the wild North, so his younger brother Attila succeeded him. I don’t think it has ever been revealed just why Attlus decided to forego the throne of Leandor and all the power and riches that go with it to live in the wilderness, but personally I suspect his younger brother has something to do with it. At any rate, I don’t trust that guy. I mean, just look at that smirk.
As for Attlus, he was released as an action figure as well, but again I don’t have him, because he also came out early on in the line and is very expensive by now. A new and improved version of Attlus will be released later this year. I’m planning to get and review him. Besides, it will be interesting to see what happens, when the two estranged brothers are confronted with each other.
If you open the box, this is what’s inside.
Attila comes with an unhelmeted head as well as a replacement faceplate with that “I just got rid of my pesky brother and now Leandor is mine” smirk. He also comes with the Hammer of Leodysseus, a ridiculously huge and ornate golden war hammer. Honestly, that hammer is so big it could double as a judge’s or auctioneer’s gavel. Furthermore, Attila has a shield bearing the likeness of the lion god Leodysseus, shoulder pauldrons which also bear the likeness of Leodysseus, a sword and sheath, a cape and a leather strap/belt. The 3D likenesses of the gods worshipped by the respective factions on the shields are separate components that are plugged onto the regular shields, offering even more customisation potential.
Gorgo comes with the Aetherblade, the evil soul-stealing magical sword he is named after, as well as a giant battle axe, a shield bearing the likeness of the demonic god Arethyr, shoulder pauldrons and a cape. Gorgo was also supposed to come with another leather strap/belt, but the strap was missing from my package. Not that this is an issue, because pretty much every Mythic Legions comes with one of these belts, which can either be worn as a belt or as a strap across the chest, so I have plenty of spares. Gorgo does not come with an unhelmeted head, because no one knows what the face under his helmet looks like or whether he has a face at all.
With regard to articulation, both figures have twenty points of articulation. There are the usual joints at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles, however both the knee and elbow are single jointed rather than double jointed. The neck is on a ball joint and can swivel as well as look up and down, somewhat hindered by the large helmets. The waist can bend and swivel as well, but there is no ab crunch. Mythic and Cosmic Legions figures are designed to be highly customisable and most parts are interchangeable, allowing you to create your preferred look or even completely original characters.
Stunning as the Mythic Legions figures are, one thing that annoys me a little about them is that you can’t just put them on your shelf right out of the box, but that you always have to attach some parts to achieve the intended look. In particular, you inevitably have to attach the shoulder pauldrons and the capes. Sometimes, you have push the pegs of the shoulder pauldrons through holes in the cape into the respective holes in the back of figure, which can be a bloody pain in the backside.
Thankfully, Attila’s and Gorgo’s capes attach to their armour or respectively shoulder pauldrons via elastic loops. However, I wouldn’t have known this, if I hadn’t watched YouTube videos reviewing the figures beforehand. In fact, with Mythic or Cosmic Legions figures, I recommend watching a few videos before assembling the figures, because particularly the attachment of the capes, but also of tails or wings for those characters who have them, is not always intuitive and there are no instructions included with the figures themselves. What is more, always heat up your figures with a hair dryer to soften the plastic before assembling or posing them, particularly in winter.
But even if the capes and shoulder pauldrons can be a pain to attach, they do look amazing. The capes are wired to billow dramatically in the wind and were designed by Christian Baluyot, a.k.a. CJESIM, a customiser who was recruited by Four Horsemen Studios. In addition to his cape, Attila also has a fabric loincloth that is wired as well. There are toy collectors who don’t like fabric capes, cloaks, etc… on their figures, but if the cloth goods are of such high quality, they look vastly nicer than plastic.
So let’s take a look at Attila and Gorgo in their full glory.
Attila and GorgoAttila vs. Gorgo
Gorgo’s armour is all black with red and gold accents. His helmet is decorated with antlers, which gives him a regal but also a very non-human appearance, though we have no idea what Gorgo looks like and what species he is. Coincidentally, if you remove Gorgo’s head, his neck piece is that of a skeleton cast in all black.
Gorgo Aetherblade
Befitting his status as a king, Attila is clad head to toe in golden armour with red and blue accents. His helmet is shaped like a lion’s head and his enormous shoulder pauldrons bear the likeness of the lion deity Leodysseus, as does his shield and ceremonial hammer. His cape is very big indeed and can be posed to blow dramatically in the wind. As always, the detail of these figures is incredible.
Attila Leossyr
Normally, when given the choice, I prefer my action figures helmet-less, but in the case of Attila I will make an exception, because the lion helmet gives him the regal appearance befitting a king. That said, the helmetless Attila head included in the set is fantastic as well. He’s clearly not a young man, but looks like someone in his fifties, who has seen his share of battles which have left their mark on him. He also reminds me of actor Josh Brolin. In fact, I like the helmetless head so much that I may put it on a regular knight body somewhere down the line.
For size comparisons, here is Attila next to a couple of other monarchs from my collection. From left to right, we have the Figura Obscura Mouse King, also by Four Horsemen Studios, as well as the Masters of the Universe Classics Chief Carnivus and Masterverse King Randor, both by Mattel. As you can see, he fits in well with any of these 6/7 inch scale toylines.
“I herewith declare this session of the Council of Kings open… – Ahem, what is that mouse doing here?”
“I am Roderic Ludovicus Ernst Theodor Amadeus Alexander Peter the First of Mousolia and I am a King as well.”
“Yes, but you were not invited. And now get lost or we’ll sic Carnivus on you.”
***
Here we have Gorgo posing with two fellow villains and a fellow Dark Knight. From left to right, we have the Masters of the Universe Classics Skeletor by Mattel, the Dark Nights: Death Metal Batman by McFarlane Toys and the Masterverse Emperor Hordak, also be Mattel. Once again, Gorgo fits in well with all of these, though it’s notable that the Batman figure has a very small head compared to the others.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this was the Dark Knight Death Metal jam session.”
“No, Bat Nuisance, this is the League of Evil meeting. And now get lost or we’ll make you!”
***
Finally, let’s see how Attila and Gorgo look together with some other Mythic Legions figures.
First of all, here we have Gorgo facing off against the heroic paladin Sir Gideon Heavensbrand. This is a fitting pairing, because Sir Gideon’s also wields a magical sword, though his blade has the power to purify the souls of the enemies he cuts down.
Here is Gorgo Aetherblade holding court. The only one of Gorgo’s minions in my collection is the little flying demon goblin Malephar on the far right, so Gorgo borrowed the skeleton warriors Clavius and Tibius from his fellow villain faction the Congregation of Necronominus. Not that the demon goblin is quite a bit smaller than his boss or the two skeletons.
That said, I do have another member of the Legion of Arethyr in my collection, namely the cursed lady knight Lady Avarona. According to her official bio, Lady Avarona hails from a disgraced aristocratic family and joined the Legion of Arethyr to wreak vengeance on those who deposed her family. Personally, I don’t think that she’s evil, just misguided. Note that she is a bit shorter than the male humanoid figures.
“Lady Avarona, do you pledge your everlasting loyalty to Arethyr?”
“I swear that I shall follow Arethyr and regain my family’s lands and fortune that were stolen from us.”
“Then, Lady Avarona, I have a mission for you. Bring me the head of Gideon Heavensbrand.”
“Gideon Heavensbrand? Why, Lord Gorgo? He’s just a deluded paladin and religious fanatic. Attila Leossyr is the true menace. His father banished mine and stole our lands. I will gladly bring you his head and that ridiculous helmet he always wears.”
“Attila Leossyr is mine to kill and mine alone. And now go forth and bring me the head of Gideon Heavensbrand. And Avarona, do not disobey me again, do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
***
And here we have Attila Leossyr in his throne room. He uses the same throne as Gorgo, because I only have one throne to be used by whoever needs one, though Attila’s throne room has a bit more bling than Gorgo’s. What is more, Attila has just received a messenger.
“What do you want? Speak!”
“My name is Duban, Sire, and I bring you an urgent message from your noble brother…”
“Nonsense. My brother is dead.”
“I assure you, Sire, that he is very much alive and that he needs to speak to you about a matter of the greatest urgency.”
“My brother is dead to me. And if he ever dares to show his face again in Leandor, he will very definitely be dead for good. And now get out.”
***
Once again, I don’t have any of Attila’s followers, because most of them were released several years ago and are rather expensive by now. So after receiving this unwelcome message, Attila is conferring with Sir Enoch and Sir Gideon Heavensbrand, two knights of his fellow heroic faction, the Order of Eathyron.
“The daughter of the Avaron family is still at large and plotting against me. She must be stopped. Bring me the head of Lady Avarona, Sir Gideon.”
“Excuse me, Sire, but shouldn’t we be going after Gorgo Aetherblade and his hellish legions rather than a lone disgraced noblewoman?”
“Gorgo Aetherblade is mine to deal with. And besides, I am your King, Heavensbrand, and you will do as I order.”
“Excuse me, Sire, but the Order of Eathyron is independent and under my command. We fight on the same side, true, but we are not part of the Army of Leodysseus.”
“You are still part of my kingdom and you’d do well not to forget that, Heavensbrand. And now bring me the head of Lady Avarona.”
“As you wish, Sire.”
“Before I forget, Sir Gideon, you have a sister, don’t you?”
“Yes, Lady Gwendolynne. Why?”
“I think I shall marry her. That way, we can unite our forces and do away with this silly conflict of authority.”
“I will inform my sister of your most kind offer, Sire.”
***
Later, in the chapel of the royal palace:
“Can you believe it? I am the head of the Order of Eathyron and he treats me like a mere lackey?”
“He is our King, Gideon.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he has to behave like an overbearing jerk. And now he wants to wed my sister, too. Even though Gwen will never marry him.”
“You’ll have to try to convince her, Gideon, for the sake of the Order and the Kingdom.”
“And Lady Avarona? Do I have to kill her?”
“I fear you’ll have to, lad. But don’t forget that your sword will purify her damned soul.”
“Easy for you to say, Enoch. You don’t have to chop off a woman’s head.”
***
What will happen when Sir Gideon meets Lady Avarona in battle, what’s up with Attila’s brother and will Sir Gideon’s sister (whom I have currently on order) marry Attila? You will find out at my blog, because I feel a toy photo story coming on.
As you can see, the Mythic Legions Attila Leossyr and Gorgo Aetherblade are two fantastic action figures and you can have a lot of fun with them. Mythic Legions figures are not cheap, but the high quality and great attention to detail makes the price well worth it. If you enjoy fantasy characters, I highly recommend Mythic Legions figures with the caveat that you will probably spend half an hour putting the figure together and that you will curse those blasted shoulder pauldrons at least twice.
Unfortunately, the Attila Leossyr and Gorgo Aetherblade two-pack is no longer in stock neither at the Four Horsemen website nor at any of the usual online collectibles dealers. I bought my set from a fellow collector via a German online marketplace, though you might also get lucky at a comics or collectibles store that still has this set in stock. Otherwise, eBay is your friend.
(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)….
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.
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’sSpeaker for the Dead Bob Shaw’sThe Ragged Astronauts. and Vernor Vinge’sMarooned in Realtime
the 60th anniversary of Star Trek’s first broadcast.
the 60th anniversary of the publication of: J. G. Ballard’sThe Crystal World Harry Harrison’sMake Room! Make Room! Robert Heinlein’sThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress Daniel KeyesFlowers For Algernon and Larry Niven’sThe World of Ptavvs. Roger Zelazny’sThis 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.
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)….
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.
… 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.”…
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.
“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.
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.”…
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…
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.]
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.
(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
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.
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 Downloadedwas 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….
…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….
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…
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.
(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!
…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….
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….
[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.]
(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.
…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 (earlyreviews, 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….
“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 TheIncompleat 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.
…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.
(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
Best Science Fiction of 2025: books and films – SF² Concatenation team Each Christmas, the team puts forward their suggestions as to the best SF of the year and we list the most suggested. – It is just a bit of fun but scroll down and you’ll see, with past years’ performance, that it has form. (Should you wish to comment, and are on FB, then the Facebook Alert for this post here)
Sinners – Jonathan Cowie Sinners, part historical US racial emancipation story, part blues musical and part traditional vampire offering, is set to take the 2026 cinematic awards scene by storm. It could even possibly get short-listed for some SF/F awards?
Has the Science Fiction Worldcon shot itself in the foot? – Jonathan Cowie The past half-decade the Worldcon has seen multiple failures of adherence to its own constitution. This breakdown in good governance is undermining credibility in the Worldcon brand. The recent history of governance collapse is recounted step-by-step. It reveals that enough is enough and that many fans may now be withdrawing tens of thousands of pounds worth of financial support!
To Mask or Not to Mask, That is the Muffled Question – Peter Tyers Following vaccine roll out four years ago, the worst of the CoVID-19 years are very much over. So what of masking policies at SF conventions?
SF Convention Listing & Film Diary with links to con sites and film trailers The list of the major, fan run, national and international level, SF cons and British Isles general release film diary.
(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.]
