25 I’ve Seen Scrolls You Pixels Wouldn’t Believe

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE PATH TO NOW IS PAVED WITH BOOKS. Front Porch Republic takes readers “Inside the Workings of Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape our Future”.

…Today, in some spheres, books are often imagined to be counter technological. A dehumanizing technological onslaught is thought to be menacing the world of books, which is tacitly conceived of as a homey yet elevated sphere analogous perhaps to Tolkien’s Shire. Thus, people sometimes call for schools to get rid of technology (meaning, in this instance, computers and AI) and to return to pencils and paper and books, as if these were not also technological.

How did books become what Joel Miller calls “the forgotten technology”? And what difference would it make to our understanding of modernity and of ourselves if we remembered? His excellent new book, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, is motivated by two closely related problems. First, because books have become so familiar, we have forgotten to recognize “the book for what it is: a remarkably potent information technology, an idea machine.” Second, we have failed to appreciate the extent to which books served “as one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of the modern world.”

Miller makes this argument via a dazzlingly wide survey of texts ranging from fourth-century BCE Greece to the present moment. The book is addressed to the educated general reader rather than a narrow audience of book historians or historians of technology….

(2) BID ON DOCTOR WHO PROPS IN FEBRUARY. “’Doctor Who’ History on the Auction Block in 2026” reports Parade. (Here’s the direct link to the “Doctor Who Online Auction 2026”.)

If you’ve ever watched Doctor Who and wanted The Doctor to materialize in your living room and drop off a Dalek, your moment is almost here. In early 2026, BBC Studios and Propstore are teaming up for an online auction that invites Whovians around the world to bid on iconic pieces of the show’s long, imaginative legacy. From historic costumes to beloved props, this is the kind of event that makes a Doctor Who fan’s heart (or hearts) skip a beat.

Scheduled to run from February 3 to February 19, this auction will feature over 200 lots, giving everyone with a passion for the Whoniverse a chance to take home a tangible piece of the longest-running sci-fi show in history. Bids start at just £100 (roughly $130), but you can bet many of the starring items will draw spirited competition. Among the highlights is a bronze Time War Dalek, the fearsome design first seen in episodes like Asylum of the Daleks….

… Any winning bids fans make will also help a charity with deep ties to the show. A full 20% of the net sale price goes to BBC Children in Need, continuing a years-long tradition of the BBC using their seminal sci-fi show to raise money for the charity.

And here’s a benchmark for just how much love the community pours into these events: at last year’s Doctor Who Propstore / BBC auction, fans and collectors raised an astonishing £245,243 (roughly $331,000) for BBC Children in Need. Those proceeds came from more than 2,000 participants around the globe, all bidding passionately on over 170 lots….

(3) ROTSLER AWARD EXHIBIT. Thanks to Kenn Bates for his photos of this year’s Rotsler Award exhibit at Loscon over Thanksgiving Weekend. The very last photo below is a close-up of something produced by this year’s award winner David Hicks. [Click for larger images.]

(4) GONE. NPR talks to Esther Estrin, publisher of Newmarket Press about the coming change: “Mass-market books are disappearing from grocery store racks”.

ESTRIN: So as you watch the era of the mass-market paperback go, are you sad?

MARGOLIS: I’m very sad about it. I’ve been sad about it for a while. Even during the ’80s, when it started to really shift, I was sad because it really – like you asked before, that you could actually establish a total unknown. Today, thank God, you have TikTok and BookTok. They could take somebody unknown and somebody can just get on a camera and say, I love this book, and next thing you know, you have Colleen Hoover or somebody. But that’s what you could have done in the past paperback that you can’t do really today. To me, Stephen King is a great example. I mean, his whole career, I don’t know what – how that might have been built otherwise, if not for the mass-market paperback.

(5) SHAUN TAN PROFILE. “’My work is often misunderstood’: Shaun Tan on his surreal Tales from Outer Suburbia” in the Guardian.

…“I’m like one of those old migrants that talks nostalgically about an old country that doesn’t even exist,” Tan says over the phone from his current home in Melbourne.

“On one hand, [that outer suburbia where I grew up] was potentially boring and a little dreary and quite artistically uninspiring. On the other hand, anything’s possible and nobody cares. You can just create or imagine something – it’s like a blank canvas.”

For a few hours a day, that blank canvas was punctuated by what Tan calls the “artform of the suburbs” – television. Only “three glorious channels” were available, but Tan would tape Doctor Who, Astro Boy and Twilight Zone reruns on the family VCR each night. It was those shows that kickstarted his interest in fantasy, science fiction, and eventually writing and illustrating his own stories.

He poured these memories and feelings into his 2008 book, Tales from Outer Suburbia – 15 illustrated short stories that reimagined those suburbs as a familiar but surreal landscape. These tales were full of memorable, unlikely characters, from a giant water buffalo in a vacant lot to a wandering deep-sea diver – an allusion to Western Australia’s history of migrant Japanese pearl divers who once braved the bends in their hundreds.

“I think my work is often misunderstood,” Tan says of Outer Suburbia’s look and feel. “I’m always at pains to say my style is not ‘quirky’, it’s not ‘weird’. It’s about normal things, normal feelings. They’re just displaced into other objects, but the displacement helps you to think about the deeper feelings and deeper meanings.”…

(6) AN EVOLVING HORROR. “‘Frankenstein’ has been endlessly rewritten, even by its author” explains the Washington Post. “Even Mary Shelley rewrote her own work; two very different versions survive today.”(Link bypasses the paywall, but registration is required to read it.) Excerpt:

…The differences between the two versions are stark. In 1818, the creature accidentally kills Victor’s younger brother, William, while trying to silence his screams. In 1831, upon learning the boy’s name, the creature declares, “You shall be my first victim,” before intentionally murdering him.

In 1818, the creature accidentally frames Justine Moritz, the Frankenstein family servant, for William’s death when he slips a locket the boy was carrying into Justine’s pocket. In 1831, he watches Justine sleep, bitter that her “smiles are bestowed on all but me,” and deliberately places the locket in her dress because “the murder I have committed because I am for ever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone.”

Students in my classes have commented that the 1831 monster resembles an incel. Deciding between the editions means deciding between a monster who teeters on the edge of humanity, who might, with the sympathy he seeks, be a peaceful creature, and a conniving creep, abandoned by a creator who (to mention another revision) plans to marry either his biological cousin (1818) or his adoptive “more than sister” (1831)….

(7) PIERRE BORDAGE (1955-2025). French author Pierre Bordage died December 26 of a heart attack. His publishers L’Atalante and Au Diable Vauvert, paid tribute:

Pierre Bordage. Photo (c) Michael Meniane

A great French writer has left us, creator of stories and worlds, he pushed boundaries of creativity, inspiration and genres, that were too narrow for his unique and powerful storytelling.

As a French writer, he expanded his unique literary career while his work was translated worldwide and sold millions copies. He wrote around fifty novels and even more short stories, winner of many literary prizes, including: Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Prix de la SGDL Paul Féval de Littérature Populaire, Prix Bob Morane, or Prix Julia Verlanger.

His wide curiosity and inspiration led him into all literary genres, from contemporary novel to space opera, from sci-fi to dystopia, from historical novel to fantasy, tales or mythologies, always putting humanity at its core.

Offering French sci-fi new goals and new dimensions alike, he became an inspiration for many generations of readers and writers.

His literary legacy will last forever in his readers’ mind.

Our thoughts are with his children Tangy and Kevin, his grandchildren, his siblings, family and close friends.

A funeral service will be held on January 7th, at Nantes, France.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

December 29, 1967 — “The Trouble with Tribbles”

My friend, 10 credits apiece is a very reasonable price. Now you can see for yourself how much the lovely little lady appreciates the finer things — Cyrano Jones

Fifty-eight years ago this evening, “The Trouble with Tribbles” first aired on NBC, as written by David Gerrold and directed by Joseph Pevney, with some of the guest cast being Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin, Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones, Whit Bissell as Station Manager Lurry, and Michael Pataki as Korax.

Memory Alpha says “Wah Chang designed the original tribbles. Hundreds were sewn together during production, using pieces of extra-long rolls of carpet. Some of them had mechanical toys placed in them so they could walk around.” Well walk isn’t how I’d describe their movement…

Memory Alpha also notes Heinlein had Martian flat cats in The Rolling Stones that were similar to these and Roddenberry called to apologize for these being so similar. My understanding is that they brought the issue to Heinlein’s attention and asked for permission to continue. To their surprise, he granted it in exchange for a signed copy of the episode’s script.

(I know that Heinlein’s authorized biography contradicts this story. Really contradicts this story.)

It would come in second in the Hugo balloting at BayCon to “The City on the Edge of Forever” written by Harlan Ellison. All five final Hugo nominees at BayCon were Trek episodes with others being written by Jerome Bixby, Norman Spinrad and Theodore Sturgeon.

David Gerrold wrote a book on his experiences in the creation of this episode, The Trouble with Tribbles: The Birth, Sale and Final Production of One Episode. He did a children’s book as well, Too Many Tribbles! Which I’d really like to listen to.

There would be two more Trek stories done with Tribbles. “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, the fifth episode of the first season of the animated series riffed off them. And of course Deep Space Nine would revisit the story in “Trials and Tribble-ations” which blended seamlessly footage from the original episode with new video including the Charlie Brill character. It, too, would be nominated for a Hugo, this time at LoneStarCon 2. (Babylon 5’s “Severed Dreams” won.)

Tribbles also have been seen in other Trek episodes and films, including The Search for Spock and the rebooted Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. They appeared in Enterprise’s “The Breach”. Phlox uses them as food for his creatures in sickbay. Which is either truly disgusting or really appropriate given how prolific they are. Or both.

Their final appearance so far is in the animated Below Decks series.

Finally, I should note the opening volume of IDW’s second Alien Spotlight series is called Tribbles. It concerns the initial discovery of the Tribbles by, errr, the Klingons. We discover why they dislike them so very much… and vice versa. Especially vice versa.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal tells Superman’s other origin story.
Broom Hilda tunes into a nicer culture.
Eek! repeats a phrase.
Eyebeam provides validation.
MythTickle plays a trick.
Reality Check gets a faceful of ads.
Wallace the Brave attempts a save.
Zach Hill is doomed.

(10) THE FOUNDER. Bitter Karella shares The Midnight Society’s dialog with Damon Knight about SFWA and AI. Starts here on Bluesky.

(11) AN INTERNET NUISANCE. “I Despise the Dudebros Purveyors of AI” declares Robin Anne Reid at Writing from Ithilien.

…I have to shut down three menu/windows every time I read a PDF. I ragequit academia.edu because first, their AI made a podcast of one of my presentations without my permission or even my knowledge that they had an AI (it’s always opt-OUT, assholes, isn’t it, never opt-IN—still failing to understand the concept of CONSENT), and then started sending me unsolicited grant opportunities.²

And since I’m still active as an independent scholar (though very glad for so many reasons not to be teaching any more, especially not to be teaching in Texas),³ I’ve been following some of the commentary and analysis of AI in general.

So in random order, some links to pieces I’ve saved: all the Substack links are ones I follow and can recommend, FYI….

These are accompanied by Reid’s own observations, for example:

…Several of us who edit and/or read for publications in Tolkien studies have had the experience of identifying submissions (essays) with AI content, specifically, citations which do not exist (in one case) or citations which exist but which are not about the claimed topic (i.e. those six articles you cited as being about Tolkien fandom do not ever mention Tolkien; I checked them all, but I also am fairly sure I know almost all the published scholarship on Tolkien fandom—it’s not very big!—and the absolute failure to cite any of it was another tell)….

(12) NOT MERE PRODUCT PLACEMENT. At Mashable, “Rhea Seehorn breaks down why ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ is so important to ‘Pluribus’”.

Every science fiction lover jumped up and pointed at the screen, Leonardo DiCaprio style, when a certain book popped up in the Pluribus Season 1 finale.

That book is none other than Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which is Carol Sturka’s (Rhea Seehorn) poolside read during her globe-trotting adventures with Zosia (Karolina Wydra).

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness introduces the frigid alien planet of Gethen, whose inhabitants are ambisexual. Every month, they undergo a period known as kemmer, during which they develop sexual characteristics. The Gethenians’ unique gender and sexuality has created a world vastly different from our own, impacting everything from war (there is none) to child-rearing (everyone chips in). The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, the second to do so after Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Given The Left Hand of Darkness‘ pedigree in genre fiction, it makes sense that Carol, a fantasy writer herself, would be reading it. (Although I’m sure Carol would be the first to say her Winds of Wycaro books don’t even come close to Le Guin.) According to Seehorn, choosing The Left Hand of Darkness for the finale came about through joint discussions with finale writers Alison Tatlock and Gordon Smith.

“We talked about who Carol might read in general, especially for leisure. Not that Le Guin’s books are easy, passive reading, but they definitely seem like books and a voice and a literary level that Carol would admire,” Seehorn told Mashable in a video interview.

Other options for Carol’s pool reading included Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for a more dystopian bent. “In the end, we really liked her reading a female author,” Seehorn said.

The resonance of The Left Hand of Darkness goes beyond Carol just liking Le Guin, though.

“[The Left Hand of Darkness] holds a mirror to and has some parallels with what the audience is watching happening in this world,” Seehorn explained….

(13) BEST AND WORST (IN TERMS OF HOW IT AGED) SF/FANTASY BOOKS OR SERIES. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Daniel Greene over at the Fantasy news YouTube Channel (577k subscribers) goes through the list of best top 20 SF/Fantasy books and series as well as the worst (in terms of those that don’t age well) 20 as voted for by one of the largest online fantasy communities on the planet – R/Fantasy. So, you will guess from this that this is biased markedly towards fantasy as opposed to SF. (I should perhaps say that I am a die-hard SF aficionado but fantasy you can keep. [I have always wanted for there to be a separate Hugo category for Best Fantasy Novel so we can stop fantasy novels knocking out worthy SF offerings from the Best Novel short and long-lists, but I know that many are more broadminded than I.] )

Some of the top books and series will come as no surprise with titles/series by the likes of Ursula K Le Guin, Michael Moorcock and Larry Niven in the favourite list. Similarly, some on the duds list (such as the Gor series and Narnia, will come as no surprise). There are some mild surprises such as Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land being a dud: as Greene says, “good book, aged &8$£ing terribly”.

Brian Jaques’ Redwall was one of a couple that appeared on both lists!

And then there were some real surprises such as Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series being considered a dud. (I remember Anne once arriving at a Danish-venued Eurocon one day by taxi and, getting out by an outside bar area, got a standing ovation…)

The worst book or series of all voted for by this community – and with twice the number of votes for the runner-up – was… Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind (novel 1994 that spawned a series).

Daniel then goes on to take the number ones from both lists to see if he can tease out what makes them the best and worst in terms of not aging well, at least as this is defined by this community of fans.

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

a glass sputnik

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Mike Glyer

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

By Michael Swanwick: I tried to send Christmas cards to a few of my friends in Russia recently, only to discover that the United States Post Office no longer delivers to Russia. The clerk had just learned that fact earlier in that day when a woman tried to send a letter there. She had just learned the identity of her birth father and wanted to establish a relationship with him. Alas, she could not.

These are sad times.

I went back home and meditated briefly on one of our Christmas tree’s ornaments—a glass Sputnik—and its place in my life.

I vividly remember when the first man-made satellite was launched into orbit. I was six years old and had a room of my own in the attic of my family’s house on King’s Road in Schenectady. I also possessed a massive console radio that had been supplanted by the TV set downstairs. I was supposed to be asleep, but by turning the volume as low as it would go and putting my ear to the speaker, I kept my parents downstairs from learning I was not.

Sputnik 1, the newscaster murmured, was orbiting the Earth. They played a recording of the enigmatic beep-beep-beep it was broadcasting, and said that nobody knew what information was being relayed. The Soviet Union had gained the high ground of space and nobody in the United States was safe from their aggression.

I was terrified.

In the USSR, public reaction was quite the opposite. People, I have read, hugged strangers on the streets of Moscow. Decades of hard work and self-sacrifice had paid off. While the US space program languished, brighter and nimbler engineers had pulled ahead of us.

Everyone knows what followed: Laika, Gagarin, Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong, and so on.

But back then, when the only man-made object in space was signaling here I am, here I am, here I am! (I wish I’d known that at the time), glass ornaments were being blown for the New Year celebrations that had replaced Christmas in the Soviet Union. They didn’t look a lot like Sputnik, admittedly. But those three whiplike antennae would have otherwise arrived at the tree broken .

This particular ornament was made in Ukraine. There is bitter irony there.

But never mind that. For one moment, the people of the USSR reached beyond the rest of the world. They took the first step off the planet, a move as significant as when the first living being left the ocean for the land. For this, they deserve full credit.

Every year, when Marianne and I decorate the tree, this ornament goes right up at the top, just below the mouse angel at its tip.

Pixel Scroll 12/28/25 That’s No Moon — It’s My Harsh Mistress!

Posted on December 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) RISK-TAKING AI DISCUSSION. In the aftermath of “SFWA Launches, Aborts LLM Tools Nebula Rule Change on Same Day” on December 19, Erin Underwood has written a post seeking to open a public discussion of the issues involved, which appeared today: “Erin Underwood: Open Letter to the Science Fiction Writers Association and Community”.

After writing the letter below, I thought rather than sending it to SFWA only, I’d share it with Mike at File 770 along with a note that read: “Am I crazy? Will this blow me up? I am so tired of being afraid of our community… I really want to have an open conversation about this, but the vehemence that some people bring to the conversation about AI is scary.” I also spoke to a few friends who encouraged me to share it. So, here I am sharing a tough topic and hoping we can all be understanding, vulnerable, and honest without judgement and fear in order to help our community get to some real solutions….

… This issue needs a broader conversation. I’ve put off raising it publicly because deviation from accepted positions (especially related to AI) in our community can be met with hostility rather than debate. That reality discourages honest discussion, even when the concerns are shared by many. Still, avoiding the conversation isn’t going to protect our community. If we want better outcomes, someone has to bring up the difficult questions, even when that might carry personal and professional risk, and I think it might be less risky for me than it is for others. So, here’s what I’m thinking …

Chuck Wendig immediately responded at Terrible Minds with “My Open Letter To That Open Letter About AI In Writing And Publishing”. Here is a brief excerpt of his extensive comments:

…There’s little evidence at hand, first and foremost, that AI is a value-add to any of this. Writing, making music, publishing, whatever. Industries not using them are perfectly viable. Writers not using AI remain perfectly viable. (I’d argue: more than viable! Actually, you’re better not using it! AI is routinely shown to decrease efficiency and require more human intervention, often just at cut cost.) The trick to this paragraph is it is a false appeal to reason: a quietly fear-based approach that you don’t want to (gasp) be left behind because you aren’t using the reasonable business tools. Except, again, nothing about this is reasonable. AI is a random middle-man created by shitty techlords, forced into systems so that they get paid and that the Magic Number Lines go up instead of flatten or descend.

We are only as “dependent” on AI tools and infrastructure as we choose to be — this isn’t an automatic. But therein lies one of the tricksy bits about this letter, like so many of the AI boosters: it presupposes an automagic AI future, a destiny for AI in and above us. It assumes it’s already here to stay, already embedded in us like a tick, so we might as well make friends with the parasite and use its Lyme Disease Tools and its Rocky Mountain Spotted Infrastructure. Why cure it? It’s already in us! No reason to ask who will rid us of this meddlesome infection!…

(2) THE END IS NEAR. Bryce Olin says, “Let’s stop worrying about how Stranger Things 5 ends and start enjoying the chaos” at Winter Is Coming.

We’re only a few days from Stranger Things 5 Vol. 2. Like most fans, I was starting to get worried about a few of my favorite characters making it through Vol. 2 (and the finale) alive and well. I even wrote a list for Winter is Coming about the 10 characters in danger, and that’s a lot of characters.

While I was writing the list, though, I came to a realization that I was putting too much weight on who is going to live, who is going to die, and how the series ends instead of just sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying this chaotic mess of a journey….

…Of course, I have my picture-perfect ending for Stranger Things and these characters. And, I’ll tell you about it: Everyone teams up to defeat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Hopper (David Harbour) don’t have to sacrifice themselves. The right characters get killed; the main characters stay alive. Everyone moves on, slowly but surely, and gets to live happily ever after.

At the end of the day, this is a show about kids trying to find their missing friend, about overcoming trauma, and about how bonds, friendship, family, and love, can’t actually be broken. There’s only one way this show should end, to me….

(3) RECOMMENDING ALASTAIR REYNOLDS. A Deep Look by Dave Hook responds to “’Belladonna Nights and Other Stories’, a collection by Alastair Reynolds, 2021 Subterranean Press”.

The Short: I recently read the Alastair Reynolds collection Belladonna Nights and Other Stories, 2021 Subterranean Press. It includes 16 short stories and novelettes. It also includes an Introduction and Story Notes by Reynolds which I loved. My favorites are two superlative stories, “Belladonna Nights“, a House of Suns short story, from The Weight of Words, Dave McKean & William Schafer editors, 2017 Subterranean Press, and “Wrecking Party“, a novelette, from Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West, John Joseph Adams editor, 2014 Titan Books. My overall average rating was 3.81/5, or “Great”, and I loved the essay content. Recommended….

(4) REAL LIFE VS. STORIES. Charle Jane Anders asks “What Is Realism and How Can We Destroy It?” at Happy Dancing.

…I’ve been thinking about realism a lot lately myself. I always struggle to present to reflect the real way that people think, act and move through the world. Still, I often feel uncomfortable with the term “realism” for a couple of reasons:

1) In genre fiction especially, the concept of realism is often conflated with a kind of performative nastiness. Gratuitous sexual assault, mutilation, extreme sadism and mass murder. These things are certainly real, but so is everything else in the world. Foregrounding them in a story raises the risk of portraying them as inevitable.

2) Humans experience reality at two levels: the level of raw sensory input and consciousness, and the level of memory — which is to say narrative. The act of consuming a story is more akin to the second version, in which events are compressed and a bit simplified. Still, a story feels more believable or potent if it contains some elements of the first, in which we get the raw sensations and immediate thoughts of someone living through something.

I don’t have much to say about that first issue with realism. We’ve all talked about it endlessly. I’ve probably written at least one essay already about the problems of seeing extreme violence and misanthropy as more “realistic” then kindness or community. It’s not that complicated — we always choose what to include in the story, and ugliness is a choice just as much as joy and decency.

(Side note: I do think George R.R. Martin strikes a blow for realism in fiction with one pivotal moment in the terrific A Game of Thrones. Not when Ned Stark is beheaded, or when Bran Stark is tossed out a window, or any of the other startling moments of violence. Rather, I’m referring to the moment when Khal Drogo wins a fight, only to die of an infected wound soon after.)…

(5) FAREWELL TO A FORMAT. John-Henri Holmberg mourns the demise of the mass market paperback in a public Facebook post.

In a very few days, on January 1, 2026, the American mass market paperback – those small, practical and once upon a time very cheap books you could buy in newsstands, gas stations, supermarkets, stands in airports, train stations or bus stations – will belong to the past. All those books from publishers called Pocket Books, Signet, Ace Books, Ballantine, Dell, Gold Medal or Fawcett, all those reprints at less than a tenth of the original hardcovers, and even more so all the originals from authors who were instrumental in shaping post-1950 literature, but most of whose books were published only in mass market paperbacks – John D. MacDonald and Louis L’Amour, Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin. Mass market paperbacks made Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Frank Herbert’s Dune into huge successes, just as they turned J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings into a bestseller and in so doing created the vast field of modern fantasy literature….

(6) VISIT MIDDLE-EARTH. Dr. Michael D.C. Drout of Wheaton College says this is “Why Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Endures” in a New York Times op-ed. (Link bypasses the paywall.)

… Still, when it came time to introduce my daughter, Rhys, and later my son, Mitchell, to Middle-earth, I tried to make each character’s dialogue distinctive.

Then we reached the Council of Elrond, a meeting of the free peoples of Middle-earth and the fulcrum on which the plot of the first book turns. It would have needed 23 voices.

Trying to come up with two dozen accents would have so exhausted my repertoire that some unfortunate elf probably would have ended up sounding as though he came from Pittsburgh, not Mirkwood. Fortunately, my son didn’t make me try. A generic elf voice was born.

But the multivocality of “The Lord of the Rings” includes what is said and who says it. During his council, the half-elven sage Elrond claims that if Frodo accepts the quest to destroy the perilous and powerful One Ring, his stature and fame will be comparable to “Hador, and Húrin, and Túrin, and Beren himself.” Readers can recognize only the name of Beren — those other “mighty elf-friends of old” are a mystery — but in this world, these names are normal cultural knowledge. “The Lord of the Rings” is littered with similar allusions: a battering ram is named Grond, after the “Hammer of the Underworld”; when he rides into battle, a king seems like “Oromë the Great.”

These mentions are presented without explanation, yet a reader cannot understand them, as if a great gulf of time separated the contemporary reader from its original audience. They are broken references, and they are one example of a reason “The Lord of the Rings” has endured: Both by intention and by providence, Tolkien wrote a world that is beautiful because it is as broken as our own.

This feeling of solidity and realism is heightened by the impression that the book itself is eroded and damaged by age, discovered and patched together. The experience of reading “The Lord of the Rings” is, for its fans, less like paging through a novel than it is like entering a different world, one in which we do not escape from our pain but one in which we can imagine that we may one day be healed.

It’s not uncommon, especially in the wake of Tolkien, for fantasy and science fiction writers to insert illusory broken references into their work as texture, casually mentioning Grabthar’s Hammer or the Doom of Valyria. But Tolkien’s allusions are not illusions, and he did not originally intend his references to be opaque.

They are real references to what Tolkien considered his true life’s work: a vast archive of poems, prose tales and quasi-historical annals that he began to compose in earnest in 1917 in a temporary hospital while convalescing from the trench fever he contracted at the Battle of the Somme. He always intended for readers to be able to read this work before “The Lord of the Rings” or at least alongside it. But he was never able to tame this unruly material into publishable form….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

December 28, 1932 – Nichelle Nichols. (Died 2022.)

By Paul Weimer: A woman of color on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Unpossible.

Possible, and Nichelle Nichols made it happen.

Even watching The Original Series in reruns in the late 70’s and early 1980’s, I could see how revolutionary, iconic and important her role as Lt. Uhura really was. Like Koenig’s Chekov and Takei’s Sulu, her presence helped solidify that the future of space and the world was not exclusively the province of white men doing white manly things.

Certainly, she was often underserved by scripts and reduced usually to a glorified telephone operator, but when she did get the chance to shine, did she shine. “Mirror, Mirror”, particularly, she is essential to helping keep the Mirror Universe crew off balance and allowing them all a chance to get home.

And of course, there was that kiss with Kirk in “Plato’s Stepchildren”, the kiss that drew the ire of the conservatives of the American South. Reportedly, the plan was to film the scene with and without the kiss, but Nichols conspired with Shatner to mess up every non-kiss take, and so the scene had to be included.

Even so, she nearly left the series early, but Dr. Martin Luther King asked her to stay on the series, emphasizing the importance of her place on the bridge. She did, and I am very glad that she did.

But my favorite Nichelle Nichols Uhura moment wasn’t in the original series, or the first two movies. No, it comes in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Kirk has managed to steal the Enterprise to go after Spock, whose soul is lodged in Dr. McCoy (and none too happy about it). Uhura is crucial to the plan to getting control of the transporter and allowing Kirk and the others to get onto the Enterprise and steal it. “Mr Adventure” (the bored transporter officer bowled over by Nichols’ Uhura) never knew what hit him. Like in “Mirror, Mirror”, you underestimate Nichols’ Uhura at your peril. Subsequent depictions of the character have taken Nichols’ direction and lead in this regard and run with it.

Outside of Star Trek, her work with NASA helped recruit numerous people to the astronaut program, particularly women and people of color. I figure it was a way of her paying things forward.

She died in 2022. Requiescat in pace.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Alley Oop pranks the future.
Reality Check knows where those socks end up.
Arlo and Janis try to communicate.
Bizarro depicts prehistoric hunting.
Jumpstart suggests how Santa will solve a problem.

(9) DRAFT CHINESE AI RULES. Gizmodo developed its own news post based on a report at Bloomberg: “Draft Chinese AI Rules Outline ‘Core Socialist Values’ for AI Human Personality Simulators”

… The products in question should be aligned with “core socialist values,” the document says….

…Under these rules, such systems would have to clearly identify themselves as AI, and users must be able to delete their history. People’s data would not be used to train models without consent.

The document proposes prohibiting AI personalities from:

Endangering national security, spreading rumors, and inciting what it calls “illegal religious activities.”
Spreading obscenity, violence, or crime
Producing libel and insults
False promises or material that damages relationships
Encouraging self harm and suicide
Emotional manipulation that convinces people to make bad decisions
And Soliciting sensitive information

Providers would not be allowed to make intentionally addictive chatbots, or systems intended to replace human relationships. Elsewhere, the proposed rules say there must be a pop-up at the two hour mark reminding users to take a break in the event of marathon usage….

(10) ABOUT DR. T. CinemaBlend contends, “Unless You Are My Father’s Age, I Doubt You’ve Ever Heard Of This Movie Written By Dr. Seuss. Yeah, It’s Weird”. Well, I know all my fellow geezers have heard of it. Have you?

Here’s the thing about Dr. Seuss (which is pronounced “Zoice,” but some of y’all aren’t ready to have that conversation yet): since so many of us grew up having his books read to us, we don’t often think about how OLD some of these stories are….

…However, what’s not as well known (unless you’re in your 70s like my father) is the movie The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. It was written by Dr. Seuss and came out in 1953. And yes, it’s just as weird as it sounds….

…The story concerns a boy named Bartholomew (Tommy Rettig) who has spacy dreams about his piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). Bart loves his widowed mother, Heloise (Mary Healy), but he can’t stand his piano teacher, who is constantly ordering him to practice, practice, practice! The only solace Bart has is a plumber who comes to their house named August (Peter Lind Hayes). Bart complains to him about his teacher being an absolute monster, and August sympathizes.

Well, after a lesson, Bart falls asleep, and that’s when the movie gets really bizarre. In a lot of ways, his dream world is like The Wizard of Oz, in that the people in the real world appear in his dream world. Terwilliker is like a tyrant, and he wants to force Bart and 499 other boys to play on a giant piano (hence the 5000 fingers). Luckily, Bart escapes, and he and his plumber friend go on an esoteric, musical adventure together….

(11) WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE? “Most normal matter in the universe isn’t found in planets, stars or galaxies – an astronomer explains where it’s distributed” – The Conversation lets us in on the secret.

If you look across space with a telescope, you’ll see countless galaxies, most of which host large central black holes, billions of stars and their attendant planets. The universe teems with huge, spectacular objects, and it might seem like these massive objects should hold most of the universe’s matter.

But the Big Bang theory predicts that about 5% of the universe’s contents should be atoms made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Most of those atoms cannot be found in stars and galaxies – a discrepancy that has puzzled astronomers….

…Astronomers recently used a new tool to solve this missing matter problem. Fast radio bursts are intense blasts of radio waves that can put out as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. First discovered in 2007, scientists found that the bursts are caused by compact stellar remnants in distant galaxies. Their energy peters out as the bursts travel through space, and by the time that energy reaches the Earth, it is a thousand times weaker than a mobile phone signal would be if emitted on the Moon, then detected on Earth.

Research from early 2025 suggests the source of the bursts is the highly magnetic region around an ultra-compact neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense remnants of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity after a supernova explosion. The particular type of neutron star that emits radio bursts is called a magnetar, with a magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than the Earth’s….

…Even though astronomers don’t fully understand fast radio bursts, they can use them to probe the spaces between galaxies. As the bursts travel through space, interactions with electrons in the hot intergalactic gas preferentially slow down longer wavelengths. The radio signal is spread out, analogous to the way a prism turns sunlight into a rainbow. Astronomers use the amount of spreading to calculate how much gas the burst has passed through on its way to Earth.

Puzzle solved

In the new study, published in June 2025, a team of astronomers from Caltech and the Harvard Center for Astrophysics studied 69 fast radio bursts using an array of 110 radio telescopes in California. The team found that 76% of the universe’s normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, with another 15% in galaxy halos – the area surrounding the visible stars in a galaxy – and the remaining 9% in stars and cold gas within galaxies.

The complete accounting of normal matter in the universe provides a strong affirmation of the Big Bang theory. The theory predicts the abundance of normal matter formed in the first few minutes of the universe, so by recovering the predicted 5%, the theory passes a critical test….

(12) A QUARTER CENTURY OF THE ISS. BBC tells readers “All you need to know about the International Space Station’s 25 years in orbit”. (Their posts are usually paywalled now, however, this one wasn’t when I checked it.)

…The ISS demonstrates what can be achieved through international cooperation and proves what humans working together can do when they put their minds to it. Not that it’s always been easy.

From power supply to habitable volume, didgeridoos to toilets, here is our take on 25 years of the ISS in 25 numbers:

27: Age of the oldest ISS module (years)

The first stage of the ISS, Zarya, was launched on a Proton rocket from the Bakinonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a bleak November morning in 1998. For those of us watching from the snow-covered mound of a disused nuclear missile silo (or at least we were told it was disused), it was an inauspicious affair. At the time, most of the stories written about the ISS were far from positive. The project – a mash-up between an abandoned US space station programme of the 1980s called Freedom, and a successor to Russia’s Mir space station – had been mired in delays and cost overruns. There was no shortage of political opposition to abandoning the programme completely.

3: Members Expedition 1

When Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko switched on the lights in November 2000, the ISS consisted of just three modules bolted together. Zarya, Zvezda and Unity continue to form the heart of the station, providing power, life support and connections to all the other sections that have been added since. Despite their cramped quarters, the astronauts spent almost five months on the embryonic station, conducting some 22 scientific investigations, seven spacewalks and welcoming two visiting Space Shuttle crews. Today, there are typically seven astronauts on the ISS at any one time – this website tracks who is in space….

(13) IF ALIEN CIVILISATIONS ARE OUT THERE, WHAT SORT WOULD WE DETECT? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Astronomer Dave Kipping over at the Cool Worlds YouTube Channel looks at a new theory. It is based on the recent history of astronomy and not on any SF film or novel. Dave Kipping calls it the Eschatian hypothesis.

You see the most ground-breaking astronomical detections are those that reveal new types of astrophysical phenomena. An example of one of these is Kipping’s own area of research, exoplanets.

Before the first exoplanet was detected (back in 1988 which I consider to be quite recent and it was only confirmed in 2003), astronomers took our Solar system of planets as the template of what to expect and so they devised techniques that would seek out our system’s type of planets, especially Jupiter-sized planets on wide orbits around their stars. However, some radical thinkers looked in the most unexpected places. The first exoplanets were bizarre worlds; planets orbiting pulsars. A few years later, the first exoplanets were found around ‘normal’ stars but again they shocked the astronomical community with the discovery of hot Jupiters close to their star.

Yet, looking back we now find that planets around pulsars and hot Jupiters are, in fact, unusual and rare types of planets. In fact, less that 1% of stars have hot Jupiters even though most stars have planets. The reason is simple: detection bias. Hot Jupiters are big, BIG, and they are big and hot. You can hardly miss them, they are so obvious.

Now, if you do not know of detection bias, then a good example would be for you to look up at the night sky with your naked eye (and what other kind of eye is there, I hear you cry). About a third of the stars you see are larger than average stars and many of these are large due to coming to the end of their main sequence and so are in the last 10% of their life time. In fact only about 1% of stars are this big and in their last 10% end phase. For example, Deneb in the constellation of Cygnus is easily visible by eye but is roughly 2,000 light years away, while the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is a smidgen over four light years away and yet it is invisible to the naked eye.

These hot Jupiters, and other astronomical detection biases such as core collapse supernovae, are the loud twits at the party that suck the oxygen out of the room. The folk who break the WSFS Constitution. We all know them. So, what has all this to do with alien detection?

Dave Kipping’s thought is that our first detection of an alien civilisation will be that of the ‘loud twits’. He unpacks this idea, noting that things like supernovae are stars that after billions of years of stability have gone into a phase of disequilibrium. Dave Kipping thinks that the first detectable alien civilisations will be those in disequilibrium with their environment. Indeed, one proposed methods for aliens to detect us would be through anthropogenic climate change that affects our atmospheric temperature and chemistry. Alarmingly, nuclear war would be the most extreme disequilibrium we can probably, currently, consider inflicting on ourselves. In fact, back in 1971 it was suggested that we rid ourselves of our nuclear arsenal by detonating them in space to signal to aliens!

Dave Kipping briefly goes into the maths – don’t worry it is fairly simple. Basically, detectability is a function of both loudness and distance, and hence the volume of space in which this can happen. Loudness fades with the inverse square law and volume is related to the power of three (or cube). This works out as the probability of detection is proportional to Loudness to the power of one-and-a-half (power of 1.5). What this means is that if a civilisation is 100 times louder than average then it is 100 to the power of 1.5, or a thousand, times more detectable!

As a twist on Arthur C. Clarke’s famous saying came from Carl Schroder with ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature‘.

Hollywood, Kipping opines, broadly portrays as aliens being either hostile or alternatively advanced benevolent. Kipping says his idea is different in that our first detection of an alien civilisation will be one in its death throes. Unlike in Hollywood, our first detection would be of a train wreck of a civilisation.

You can see Dave Kipping’s 15-minute video below complete with several SFnal references and ideas as what to do about it. “Our First Contact with Aliens Will Be Their Last Words”.

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

Uncanny Magazine Issue 68 Launches 1/6

Posted on December 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

The 68th issue of Uncanny Magazine, winner of eight Hugos, plus a British Fantasy Award, a Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, will be available on January 6 at uncannymagazine.com.

Hugo Award-winning Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Michael Damian Thomas is proud to present the 68th issue of their eight-time Hugo Award-winning online science fiction and fantasy magazine, Uncanny Magazine. Stories from Uncanny Magazine have won Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. As always, Uncanny features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative essays, and a deep investment in the diverse SF/F culture, along with a Parsec Award-winning monthly podcast featuring a story, poem, and interview from that issue.

All of Uncanny Magazine’s content will be available in eBook versions on the day of release from Weightless Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Kobo. Subscriptions are always available through Weightless Books. The free online content will be released in 2 stages- half on the day of release and half on February 3.

Follow Uncanny on their website, or on Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 68 Table of Contents

Cover

Faery Frights by Katy Shuttleworth

Editorial

“The Uncanny Valley” by Michael Damian Thomas

Fiction

“The Doorkeepers” by A. T. Greenblatt (1/6)
“Be My Horse, Ride the Cowboy” by Christopher Caldwell (1/6)
“I Met You on the Train” by J. R. Dawson (1/6)

“This Story Does Not Exist” by Kylie Lee Baker (2/3)
“The Memory Hounds of Bak-Ankham” by A. W. Prihandita (2/3)
“Words That Wither, Words That Bloom” by Jules Arbeaux (2/3)

“Girl Stuff” by Claire Humphrey (1/6)

Essays

“These Stories Teach Us How to Fight” by Dawn Xiana Moon (1/6)
“Uncanny Interview with Marie Brennan” by Betsy Aoki and Marie Brennan (1/6)

“I Write in English Because I Can” by Jana Bianchi (2/3)
“Frognative Dissonance” by Riley Silverman (2/3)

Poetry

“No Kings / No Soldiers” by A. M. Tuomala (1/6)
“An underground butterfly” by Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga (1/6)

“The Parsley Girl” by Theodora Goss (2/3)
“A Field Guide for Broken Sons in Transit” by Joemario Umana (2/3)

Interviews

Interview: Christopher Caldwell by Caroline M. Yoachim (1/6)

Interview: A. W. Prihandita by Caroline M. Yoachim (2/3)

Podcasts

Episode 68A (January 6): Editor’s Introduction; “The Doorkeepers” by A. T. Greenblatt, as read by Matt Peters; “No Kings / No Soldiers” by A. M. Tuomala, as read by Matt Peters; and Michael Damian Thomas interviewing A. T. Greenblatt.

Episode 68B (February 3): Editor’s Introduction; “This Story Does Not Exist” by Kylie Lee Baker, as read by Erika Ensign; “The Parsley Girl” by Theodora Goss, as read by Erika Ensign; and Michael Damian Thomas interviewing Kylie Lee Baker.

[Based on a press release.]

Erin Underwood: Open Letter to the Science Fiction Writers Association and Community

Posted on December 28, 2025 by Mike Glyer

119

Hi Friends,

After writing the letter below, I thought rather than sending it to SFWA only, I’d share it with Mike at File 770 along with a note that read: “Am I crazy? Will this blow me up? I am so tired of being afraid of our community… I really want to have an open conversation about this, but the vehemence that some people bring to the conversation about AI is scary.” I also spoke to a few friends who encouraged me to share it. So, here I am sharing a tough topic and hoping we can all be understanding, vulnerable, and honest without judgement and fear in order to help our community get to some real solutions.

Thank you!
Erin

Dear SFWA and community members,

This week, SFWA announced new award rules related to AI, rescinded those rules shortly afterward, and then launched a survey to gather additional input from the writing and creative community. I considered filling out that survey. It then became clear to me that the only people likely to read those survey responses would be a handful of people managing the process.

This issue needs a broader conversation. I’ve put off raising it publicly because deviation from accepted positions (especially related to AI) in our community can be met with hostility rather than debate. That reality discourages honest discussion, even when the concerns are shared by many. Still, avoiding the conversation isn’t going to protect our community. If we want better outcomes, someone has to bring up the difficult questions, even when that might carry personal and professional risk, and I think it might be less risky for me than it is for others. So, here’s what I’m thinking …

The challenges raised by AI did not appear overnight. They have been building for years as AI has grown in scope, scale, and everyday use across creative and business industries. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. The way this technology evolved was deeply flawed, and real harm has already been done to creators. That history matters and can’t be ignored.

At the same time, refusing to adapt in ways that protect our own communities would create new harm. Writers, artists, musicians, publishers, and the industries that support them must remain viable and competitive in a modern world that is becoming deeply dependent on AI tools and AI-driven infrastructure. If we are going to protect the future of creative work, we need award rules that are practical and that also allow us to use ordinary business tools.

Having a yes/no switch that governs the use of AI and generative AI isn’t viable because this technology is now embedded throughout the core infrastructure that supports businesses today. However, the fundamentally human act of creation must remain in human hands. At the same time, there are AI use cases that touch creative work directly and indirectly, often without the creator’s knowledge or consent. Those realities must be acknowledged. Creators should not be penalized for incidental, accidental, or third-party use of AI in business processes surrounding their original work.

For that reason, I am writing this open letter to SFWA and the broader creative community to argue for a more nuanced approach to understanding AI and its use within our industry. We need clearer distinctions between human authorship and the surrounding processes that support business operations, communication, accessibility, marketing, and distribution.

Some uses of AI should have no bearing on whether a work is eligible for an award. Other uses should be decisive. Determining where those lines belong is important, and it can’t be done through rigid, binary rules that treat all AI involvement as equivalent.

The creative arts community is experiencing a deep sense of disruption and vulnerability in response to the rapid rise of generative AI. These concerns are legitimate and, for many, unsettling. When tech companies began developing large language models, original creative works were used without permission to train the very systems that are now threatening creators’ livelihoods, authorship, and ownership. That breach of trust is real and unresolved. It also can’t be undone, which means creatives and the industries that support them must think strategically about how this technology shapes both risk and opportunity going forward while also continuing to fight for fair compensation for their work (which, again, was used without permission).

The evolution of AI use cases is fundamentally reshaping how modern business and industry operate, from book publishers to sales and marketing firms, retailers, and fan communities. AI isn’t niche any longer. It’s everywhere, including in our everyday digital tools and the infrastructure that makes business operate effectively. It shapes marketing and advertising, powers internet browsers and discovery systems, feeds social media platforms, and supports strategic planning, workflow design, internal communications, and day-to-day operations.

Publishers can’t realistically avoid using these tools if they intend to remain competitive and continue selling books, art, and music created by their authors and artists. At the same time, these tools are enabling smaller and independent publishers to compete more effectively with large companies such as Tor, Penguin Random House, and Gollancz by improving efficiency, reach, and sustainability.

Most creators are not attempting to replace their own creative labor with AI. They are acting in good faith and want clear, ethical boundaries around authorship, originality, and creative ownership. The real challenge is that avoiding AI entirely is becoming increasingly impractical, even for those who are committed to producing fully human-authored work, as AI is now embedded in systems creators can’t control or realistically avoid.

If awards organizations use eligibility rules that treat any involvement of AI as disqualifying, there is a real risk that soon very little work will remain eligible, even if a work was wholly created by a human. Such rules also discourage transparency when creators and publishers do not always see and can’t always account for where AI has been used.

Awards exist to recognize excellence related to original work by human creators and the governing rules for awards should be distinct from regulating every tool involved in the surrounding production, communication, and distribution process. Conflating authorship with standard business processes makes it harder to uphold the values awards are meant to protect.

The following list outlines current and foreseeable AI use cases that fall outside the act of creative authorship itself but either touch it in some way by the author or the publication processes. This list isn’t exhaustive since new and unanticipated uses will continue to emerge. This is precisely why a more nuanced and flexible approach to AI policy is necessary to protect human creativity while acknowledging the world in which creators are already working.

Current and future AI use cases for original creative works:

I. Everyday Creation, Communication, and Documentation

Voice-to-Text Dictation: Voice-to-text is one of the most common and accessible digital tools in use today, and most modern systems rely on generative AI to transcribe, normalize, and correct spoken language. Dictation is used for verbally jotting down ideas, sending text messages, and drafting emails.
Meeting Transcription: Meetings often happen over Zoom, Teams, or other video platforms that allow for meeting transcripts, which can also generate summaries and lists. Those transcripts can also be dropped into a generative AI system to pull out to do lists, ideas, and themes from the call.
Writing Tools and Applications: Microsoft Word, Gmail, and many other organizational tools have AI embedded in their code and use programs like Grammarly and CoPilot to help people proof, edit, and write. Often the very words you were going to write appear as suggested text if you don’t turn off these functions. It’s not just the author who is using these tools but also the editor, the assistants, and any number of other staff who work on the original file.

II. Editorial Intake, Research, and Creative Support

AI for Screening and Triage: Some publishers are either considering or have already started using AI to some degree to manage incoming submissions and to move through the digital slush pile to weed out submissions that did not follow the guidelines or other rules … as well as identifying AI generated writing. This may also help them to look for submissions that meet a specific publishing need quickly and efficiently to elevate it for human editorial review.
Initial Research and Accessibility Tool: AI can help authors parse complex scientific concepts, historical material, or technical subjects, translate sources from other languages, or gain an initial understanding of unfamiliar topics. When used as a starting point rather than a substitute for research, this can expand access to knowledge for authors without institutional resources.
Continuity and Reference Tools: For authors, publishers, and studios managing shared worlds or long-running series, private, domain-specific language models can be used as internal reference systems to track character details, timelines, world-building facts, and continuity. Using AI in this constrained, reference-oriented way supports consistency and accuracy without generating new creative content or replacing human authorship.

III. Business Intelligence, Strategy, and Market Operations

Data Analytics, Market Research, and Strategy: Publishers may use AI to analyze large volumes of data to identify catalog gaps, assess risks, understand readership trends, optimize release timing, and inform strategic decisions. This directly impacts publishing choices for which original works they accept and which ones they reject.
AI in Marketing, Promotion, and Discoverability: Even when a story itself is entirely human-written, publishers may use AI to generate cover copy, promotional blurbs, SEO optimization, CTR analysis, or marketing insights.
Audience Engagement and Community Management: Publishers and creators may use AI to manage newsletters, reader outreach, community moderation, and customer support across social and digital platforms. These tools shape audience relationships without affecting the creative work itself.
Workflow Automation and Internal Operations: AI is increasingly used to automate scheduling, task management, internal documentation, production tracking, and coordination across editorial, design, and marketing teams. These operational uses support the publishing process without influencing creative authorship.

IV. Legal, Rights, and Institutional Infrastructure

Legal, Contractual, and Financial Processes: Agents and publishers increasingly use AI tools to review contracts, analyze royalty statements, or flag legal issues. These business uses are unrelated to the act of writing and should not affect award eligibility. However, it is worth noting that authors can also drop their contracts into a generative AI system to ask it questions about the contract related to their original work to ensure they understand their rights, what they might be missing, and what they should explore more fully with legal counsel.
Rights Management and IP Protection: AI tools are being used to track copyright infringement, detect unauthorized distribution, manage licensing, and monitor derivative uses of creative works online. These systems help protect authors’ rights and income without contributing to creative content.

V. Distribution, Access, and the Changing Internet

Accessibility, Localization, and Format Adaptation: Publishers and platforms increasingly use AI to generate captions, transcripts, audiobooks, large-print formats, and translations for global or disabled audiences. These tools expand access to creative works without altering authorship or creative intent yet still involve generative AI touching the work after creation.
Production and Technical Preparation: AI is increasingly used in formatting, layout checks, quality assurance, audio cleanup, and technical preparation for print, e-book, and audio releases. These uses support distribution rather than authorship.
Generative and Agentic Internet Platforms: The internet itself is shifting from a search-based environment to a generative and agent-driven one. As generative search engines, AI agents, and platform-level AI models become embedded across the internet, users are operating inside ecosystems where AI mediates discovery, visibility, and engagement by default. This means that information gathered in these environments increasingly comes through generative AI systems.

VI. Structural Impact on the Publishing & Fan Ecosystem

Disproportionate Impact on Small and Independent Presses: Small and indie publishers often rely on generative AI for marketing, planning, and analysis because they lack the staffing and budgets of large publishers. Blanket AI restrictions force these presses into an impossible choice of either avoiding modern tools that allow them to publish more work and sell more books or use them and disqualify all their authors from awards.
Operational Strain on Fan Organizations and Conventions: Fan organizations and conventions are overwhelmingly volunteer-run and chronically understaffed. These groups operate on extremely limited time and resources, often relying on a small number of overextended volunteers to handle writing, editing, scheduling, marketing, and email communications as part of basic business operations. AI tools can reduce the burden of these time-consuming tasks and help volunteers work more efficiently. Without such support, many conventions may be forced to scale back or shut down entirely due to burnout and lack of operational capacity. The loss of these community spaces would be a significant blow to the science fiction, fantasy, and horror community as a whole.

These examples represent only some of the ways AI and generative AI are already being used across publishing and creative industries. Those uses will continue to expand because many industries now depend on infrastructure created or enabled by AI technologies. This reality doesn’t mean we give in or give up. It also doesn’t mean that original creative work should be written by AI.

It does mean that award rules must be refined so authors and publishers are not further penalized for using the very systems built from their own work. If anyone deserves to benefit from tools that improve marketing, communication, efficiency, or sales, it is the creators whose work was scraped to train these systems. Rules that clearly promote human authorship while recognizing the realities of modern business are both possible and necessary.

We need a clear distinction between authorship and process. Without that distinction, publishers are left operating in fear that routine activities such as voice-to-text transcription, internal planning, or drafting communications could jeopardize award eligibility. That environment is neither realistic nor sustainable and puts authors in a powerless position to know when someone else has jeopardized their award eligibility.

There are responsible ways to use AI that support creators without replacing creative labor. Binary rules do not work when applied across the board to all AI usage involved in the production and publication of original work. The past can’t be undone. The future, however, can still be shaped through accountability, fair compensation, and clear opt-in mechanisms that respect creative ownership, while also taking a realistic view of the rules that govern the fruits of our community’s labor.

If creatives do not participate in shaping that future, others will do it for us. That has already happened once. It can’t be allowed to happen again.

Science fiction writers spend their careers imagining how systems scale, fail, and reshape societies over time. Horror writers understand how harm spreads when those systems break, and how trauma follows long after the damage is done. Fantasy writers understand power, the costs of wielding it, and the necessity of limits. If any community is equipped to imagine both the dangers ahead and the structures needed to prevent them, it is this one.

Penalizing creators for incidental or third-party AI use in surrounding business processes doesn’t protect the arts. If realistic standards are not established by creative communities and their organizations, the result will be decided by others who do not have our best interests at heart.

For transparency, I used speech-to-text to capture my words and generative AI to clean up grammar and structure. I needed an efficient way to get my thoughts down quickly so I could move into the work of manually editing and refining this text. I went through it multiple times, revising language, examples, and arguments until the final version fully matched my vision. This was done intentionally to demonstrate how AI can function as a communication tool for business purposes. This letter isn’t a work of art or artistic creation.

Organizations like SFWA are navigating an unprecedented shift in how we work and how original creative work is produced and supported. They deserve good-faith input and the space to do that work. They will likely stumble at times, and when they do, it is important to remember that they are human and to extend some grace as they work to find the best path forward. The goal should always be to protect people, because people are what matter.

Sincerely,

Erin Underwood

Erin Underwood is a writer, editor, and content producer based in the greater Boston area. A three-time Hugo Award nominee and MFA graduate, she’s a published anthologist, recognized screenwriter, and active science fiction community volunteer.

Pixel Scroll 12/27/25 Never Give Up Pixeling, Never Stop Scrolling

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) TREK COLLECTIBLES ON THE BLOCK IN 2025. TrekMovie.com reviews“The Year In Auctions: Top 12 Star Trek Memorabilia Items Sold In 2025”.

For many fans, collecting is one of the primary ways to engage with the world of Star Trek. Faithful reproductions can be exciting, but collectors of a certain kind seek the real deal: screen-used and production-made props, costumes, and other memorabilia. As Captain Picard sagely says in Star Trek: First Contact, “touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way, make it seem more real.” They may just be tools of the trade to those behind the scenes, but these unique pieces of Star Trek history can take on an almost sacred significance.

Every year, the major auction houses curate an incredible array of production-related props and memorabilia, accessible to fans all across the globe. There can be some amazing finds online, even on eBay. For the highest bid, anyone can own a little (or big) genuine piece of Star Trek. Each item has its own story to tell, unique in the insight it reveals of the production process. A few auction lots caught our eye, either by nabbing an astonishing price or simply for being interesting. So, in no particular order, here is a roundup of our picks for the most fascinating pieces of Star Trek to hit the auction block this year.

Going for the highest price was this iconic instrument from the first Hugo-winning episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Picard’s Ressikan flute

Price: $403,200

Sold: September 4, 2025 through Propstore

What better note to end it on than one of the most beloved props from one of the most beloved episodes in the entire franchise, the Ressikan flute? Featured in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Inner Light,” the flute represents Captain Picard’s transformation from starship captain to family man as he ages a lifetime over the course of a lunch break. The episode is widely considered one of the greatest in all of Star Trek, which is why this prop sells for such astronomical sums each time it goes to auction. Until last year’s Julien’s auction, the flute was the second most expensive Star Trek prop ever sold. This year it sold again, combined with the screen-matched box featured at the end of the episode and a continuity script used on set, to a very well-funded collector….

(2) STAR TREK ANSWER ON GAME SHOW. [Item by Steven French.] The BBC presents an early evening game show called House of Games (hosted by Richard Osman, a best-selling mystery writer) in which each round involves a different kind of game. However, the last round is always “Answer Smash” in which contestants have to “smash” the answer to the question on top into the name of the object in the photo below. Here’s one of the answers in tonight’s episode:

(3) IT’S A WONDERFUL COPYRIGHT. [Item by Dann.] Amazon Prime Video has recently been subjected to criticism for offering an abridged version of the Christmas classic movie, It’s A Wonderful Life. The abridged version removes 22 minutes from the original 130-minute film. Most of the excisions are the scenes in Bedford Falls where George Bailey is learning what the alternative reality where he had never been born is like.

While the copyright of the movie was allowed to lapse, those of the original short story “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern and the musical score by Dimitri Timokin had not. The legal theory for the abridged version is that it largely omits material subject to copyright and therefore can be freely aired/streamed.

Amazon critics point out that both versions are available on the service, but note that the difference between the two is not transparent. Abridged versions have been available prior to the advent of streaming.

(4) HOW DID THE MUPPET SHOW BEGIN? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] BBC Radio 4 has just aired a half hour programme on the show that took the world by storm and launched the superstar Miss Piggy. The rest, as they say, is history. You can access the programme here though it may be that if you are outside of Brit Cit you need a subscription. [Update: It appears this content may have been pulled altogether, rather than just being inaccessible due to a subscription requirement.]

The Muppet Show almost never happened! The pitch for the show had been turned down by a number of broadcasters. However, the British TV mogul Lew Grade (the man who also backed Gerry Anderson so enabling Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and UFO) liked the idea of the Muppets and when Lew liked something, he gave it his whole-hearted support.

Before it became a global sensation, The Muppet Show was a British gamble. In this lively and affectionate documentary, Louise Gold – who played Annie Sue Pig – celebrates the show’s anarchic birth in Britain in the mid-1970s. Rejected by American networks, Jim Henson’s puppet troupe found a champion in ATV boss Lew Grade, who backed the series and gave it a home at Elstree Studios.

Broadcast on ITV Sunday nights, The Muppet Show was an overnight hit. Its surreal humour and chaotic brilliance won over British audiences instantly. Louise Gold, the show’s first British female puppeteer, guides us through its early days, sharing how she landed her job, how the famous opening sequence was put together, and revisiting the creative process behind some of the show’s most famous sketches – from the Swedish Chef and Veterinary Hospital to Pigs in Space.

(5) MYTHOPOEIC PAPERS. From Robin Anne Reid, who co-chaired the conference, we learn The Mythopoeic Society is now offering for sale the Proceedings of the Online Mythopoeic Seminar #4, 2025. Available in paperback ($10) and e-book ($8).

This collection of papers presented at the Mythopoeic Society’s 2025 online conference focuses on intersectional feminist approaches to women and gender in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, and other mythopoeic work. The conference honored the first anthology on women and Tolkien, Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien (2015), edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan.

(6) GMAIL NEWS. “Google will let users swap out Gmail addresses without losing data” says the Los Angeles Times. (Article is behind a paywall.)

Google has finally answered users’ cries, allowing Gmail users to swap out embarrassing teenage email addresses.

Gmail account holders can now change their existing @gmail.com address while retaining their data and services.

Once changed, old email addresses will remain active, and users will continue to receive emails sent to both the old and new addresses….

… The ability to change Google Account email addresses is gradually rolling out to all users, and is not immediately available to everyone, Google noted on its support page.

Gmail users who want to switch to more anonymous email addresses or felt burdened by the email addresses they chose as kids celebrated the update on social media.

“Feature needed: 2005. Feature arriving: 2025. Gap: two decades of suffering,” one user posted on X.

“So all those years of ‘cool’ usernames and cringe emails can be erased… shame it can’t delete the memories associated with them,” another X user posted.

“Nah I’m keeping StonerBeast42069 forever!!” one Reddit user quipped.

Members of the transgender community and others who have changed their names were also happy as the new options let them distance themselves from their former names….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Blade Runner (1982)

By Paul Weimer: Blade Runner is one of the most iconic movies in science fiction, yet it took me years to see it. This is not surprising, since, if you have followed the through line of my science fiction watching, the movie came out in 1982, before I was seeing movies in a theater, on my own or otherwise. And it was a box office disappointment, it didn’t linger in first run theaters like other movies I would see starting the next year would (e.g. Return of the Jedi).

So I missed the initial boat. I had heard of the film in magazines like Starlog, the movie really did have a cult afterlife in its initial run.

I did finally see it for the first time when it came on WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City. I remember the bumpers for the film even more vividly than the movie itself, with the Channel 11 interstitials proudly saying “We now return you to BLADE RUNNER”, with a strong resonant intonation of the name. One could even believe the announcer was as excited for the film as the viewers.

And so I watched it for the first time. This was a TV cut of the Theatrical cut, with the voiceover, and with the happy ending. Even as butchered as it was (frankly, Brazil was worse, but that’s a different story), I was enthralled. Look, it’s Indiana Jones/Han Solo hunting androids in a weirdly rainy Los Angeles. I didn’t quite know what noir was as a genre at that point, but I had seen noir films on WPIX and other channels, and I could see immediately that this movie was drawing on that tradition, for all of its science fiction trappings. This was the first time I had really encountered this particular genre blend before.

And what a blend. What made Blade Runner, even in this form work for me? Those visuals, perhaps. I wasn’t a photographer, then, and thought photography was stupid…and yet the visuals of the movie were arresting (okay, it took me a long time to get that I liked photography and wanted to do it for myself). The iconic characters and the pathos? Certainly that was a factor, too. “Like tears in rain”, indeed. The small character and large character moments, alike, throughout the film.

The music? Remember I am not, thanks to my brain a big music person, but the Vangelis score is memorable all the same. Finding that out led my brother and I to pick up an album called “Jon and Vangelis”. We were already fans of Jon Anderson’s group YES, so that introduced me to the song “The Friends of Mr. Cairo”. And that song is an homage to old movies, some of that DNA, in the noir portion, that went into Blade Runner.

And of course, watching Blade Runner was a gateway for me to try the stories and novels of Philip K Dick, which I found were very different than the movie, but in their own unique and awesome way. Even Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel the movie was based on, is very tonally different. I was confused, but intrigued all the same.

Thus, the seed of watching this movie helped bloom a whole host of descendant likes and discoveries on my part. I watched it for years whenever it would show on WPIX. I eventually got a video tape, and a DVD of the theatrical cut so that I could watch it at will.

But when the first major box set came out, with the original versions, without the narration and with everything complete, it was like watching the movie with fresh eyes. It felt different and looked different to my eyes to see the theatrical, the international and finally the final cut versions. I am still mixed on whether the full unicorn dream in the final cut is necessary, but I definitely think that the canonical Blade Runner cut in my head has at least some of it.

And as much as a voiceover might tie the movie back to noir, the movie doesn’t need it. And that reminds me of the movie Dark City, whose original cut has a voiceover in the beginning…but the final director’s cut tosses that and allows the audience to figure things out. Dark City, among a myriad of other movies, clearly learned from Blade Runner, children of a classic movie of science fiction.

As far as Blade Runner 2049, its sequel, decades later, well that is a different story entirely…

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Loose Parts doesn’t look where it’s going.
Rubes finds space makes things more difficult.
Six Chix knows why book clubs start.
The Argyle Sweater lists forgotten superheroes.

(9) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] John Williams was nominated for an Oscar for the musical score for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He lost to John Williams for the musical score to Star Wars.

(10) RE CURSIVE. Atlas Stationers is asking $200 for Ferris Wheel Press’ “Lord of The Rings Fountain Pen Set – Sauron”. Admittedly, even your two eyes may find it challenging to see Sauron’s single eye in this design.

Featuring a dark fiery red body and a grip with the gates of Mordor™ bracketed by Sauron’s face and Eye. Sauron’s grip is etched with the Black Gates of Mordor. Prominent on the grip is the silhouette of his helmet, as depicted in the Prelude to the Fellowship of the Ring, as well as a render of the top of his tower, Barad-Dûr, complete with the Eye’s fiery manifestation.

(11) A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS — HOW IT GOT HERE. [Item by Dann.] From the folks at The Everyman Commentary comes a piece by Sr. Editor J. Antonio Juarez about the making of the animated Christmas special A Charlie Brown Christmas. The article recounts some of the challenges encountered to fund and make the special.

We learn that it was originally sponsored by Coca-Cola with brief advertisements included in the animation at the beginning and end.
We learn that Snoopy’s dog house was originally blue.
We also learn about the non-negotiable content that Charles “Sparky” Schulz required to be included.
The TV executives thought the final product was going to perform poorly. They assumed that the special would air one time and then be quickly forgotten. It turns out that they were wrong.

Dann’s supplemental: The Everyman Commentary is a diverse collection of authors who appear to largely cover religious and conservative themes. One of them has had stories published in Cirsova magazine, so there is a bit of a genre tie-in.

(12) STILL IN THE CAN. Deadline poses an existential question: “18 Big Unreleased Movies: Will They See The Light Of Day?” Batgirl is an obvious entry. Here are two more of the several films of genre interest on the list.

Big Bug Man

This unreleased American animated TV film starred Brendan Fraser and Marlon Brando, marking the latter’s last film role. It followed a candy company worker who gains special abilities after being bitten by insects. The hand-drawn film is reported to have cost as much as $20 million. Pic was written by Bob Bendetson, who also wrote episodes of The Simpsons, and was directed Bendetson and Peter Shin. Brando was originally asked to voice a male character, but Brando thought it would be fun to voice the old lady Mrs. Sour instead. Brando reportedly wore a blonde wig, a dress, white gloves, and full makeup while recording the voice. An unwell Brando died shortly after recording his part in the film. It was originally scheduled for release between 2006 and 2008, but never got a release….

The Magic 7

The Magic 7 is an animated TV film written and directed by Roger Holzberg. The film centers on the adventures of two children and a dragon as they fight the arch-enemies of Earth. The stellar voice cast included John Candy, Michael J Fox, Ted Danson, Ice-T, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore and James Earl Jones. It was slated to air on Earth Day, April 22, 1997, but was postponed. After later plans for a 2005 release, the film was again suspended….

(13) UK SFF/H CREATORS WE LOST IN 2025. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The New Year is a time of celebration of a fresh revolution of the Earth about our star. Yet, sadly, the past year saw us lose a good few. Indeed, Filers of a certain age find that their Christmas card address lists get a little shorter each year. Of those lost, there are the professional associated with science fiction. BBC Radio 4 Extra ran a programme on those genre-related folk that left us in 2025.

Toby Hadoke pays tribute to some of those who made indelible contributions to UK horror, science-fiction and fantasy who sadly died in 2025.

You can access episode 1 (of 2 episodes) the programme here if you are in the British Isles or have a subscription to the BBC.

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

Cherryh Wins LASFS’ Forry Award

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

C. J. Cherryh is the winner of the 2025 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. The award was announced at Loscon over Thanksgiving Weekend.

It is Cherryh’s fourth career honor. She was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2016, received the Skylark Award from the New England Science Fiction Association in 1988, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from the Heinlein Society in 2021.

She has written more than 80 books including the Hugo Award–winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988). Cherryh also won a Hugo for the short story “Cassandra” (1979).

The Forrest J Ackerman or Forry Award has been given by the LASFS annually since 1966 for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Ackerman joined LASFS in the year the club was founded, 1934.

The names of all previous Forry Award winners can be seen here.

[Thanks to Charles Lee Jackson II for the story.]

What’s In Jonathan Cowie’s Website Update?

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By Jonathan Cowie: After half a decade I have at long last updated my personal satellite website at Science-Com.Concatenation.

What happened was CoVID-19, which was a little more dramatic for myself as I had no internet access. Obviously when I was working I had office access, and then I had personal access at my local library cybercafé, voluntary work place and learned scientific society Fellows Room cybercafés. All well and good and things worked just fine… Until CoVID and at a stroke all my internet access just closed instantaneously.

So I stopped updating my personal website (well, my life is quite boring) and focussed on keeping SF² Concatenation going which involved mailing memory sticks (I had to mail books for review in any case) and a couple of local fan members downloading online SF news to USBs which I picked up on my permitted, daily lock-down walks. Then between lockdowns it was frantically accessing stuff. Amazingly, it all worked.

And friends rallied round. Here a special shout out to the amazing Dave Langford who – off his own bat – snail-mail posted me paper copies of his monthly Ansible. Meanwhile the paper part of my science journal subscriptions came into their own and this kept me up-to-date which meant that I gave the occasional street presentations to locals on things like CoVID-19 vaccine research — BNT162b2, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 etc (Britain was one of the first countries to have the vaccine rollout).

There were some ingenious workarounds. Digitally savvy fans do not seem to be aware that, in the UK at the time of CoVID, in households whose occupants are all over 65, some 35% do not have internet access! But there is no stopping human creativity.

One of the things that stopped during CoVID was our regular, local pub quizzes. So, during CoVID, the quizmaster would post weekly quiz questions on-line. A friend would access these and I would phone them up and they’d put me on speaker phone. My friends also had a zoom connection with another quiz team member and they also had a land line phone connection with yet another team member that had no internet access. In short four household were connected and so we could do the quizzes. Neat, huh?

Lockdown did give me time to study, which was a plus, and I rotated ‘Google Scholar’ queries around a handful of local friends so I could keep up-to-date. (I rotated the requests so as not to overburden anyone, but surprisingly all welcomed the challenge as lock-down had its boring moments, also, none of my local, non-academic friends were aware of Google Scholar: it was a revelation to them.) Meanwhile, at home I have a physical library of thousands of academic papers garnered over the decades and filed by subject and lining bookshelves, storing carbon and further insulating parts of my home. Not to mention a digital library also of thousands of science papers, so I had good resources to draw upon. All this enabled me to work on my next big project of the decade (more news of which to come in 2026).

With regards to my personal website, I have been updating it off-line but have now, after over half a decade, updated the online version ahead of the aforementioned BIG project launch next summer.

Filers will likely not be bothered with some aspects of this update (the finer points of Earth system science or my personal shenanigans are unlikely to be of interest). However, the science fictional and fan posts might just tickle a few. Some of these have already appeared in my own contributions to File770 (so you may get the occasional sense of déjà vous) but there’s other SFnal stuff there in the mix.

So, if anyone is interested, here are the more SFnal and a few fan highlights of my half decade:

Merry Christmas, Betwixmas and happy New Year to one and all Filers the planet over (and possibly elsewhere knowing some of you).

Pixel Scroll 12/26/25 What’s Inside A Scroll? Energetic Pixels Of Course. Go See

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Mike Glyer

(1) NEW YEAR’S ADDITIONS TO PUBLIC DOMAIN. Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle highlight works that will shed their copyrights on “Public Domain Day 2026” at the Duke University School of Law website.

Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance…

Here are some of the listed books that will be of interest to Filers for one reason or another:

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version)
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple)
Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Benson), the first four Nancy Drew books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock
Watty Piper (pen name of Arnold Munk), The Little Engine That Could (the popular illustrated version, with drawings by Lois Lenski)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
Elizabeth Coatsworth (author) and Lynd Ward (illustrator), The Cat Who Went to Heaven
Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons

Plus some characters, comics and cartoons:

Betty Boop from Fleischer Studios’ Dizzy Dishes and other cartoons
Rover (later renamed Pluto) from Disney’s The Chain Gang (as an unnamed bloodhound) and The Picnic (as Rover)
Blondie and Dagwood from the Blondie comic strips by Chic Young
Flip the Frog from Fiddlesticks and other cartoons, by Ub Iwerks after he left Disney
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons, the initial week of Mickey Mouse comic strips, and ten new Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney

(2) REGISTER FOR THE FEMALE MAN ZOOM PANEL. [Item by Jed Hartman.] There will be free online discussion panel about Joanna Russ’s brilliant novel The Female Man, which was published fifty years ago this year.

December 30, 11 a.m. US Pacific time, going for about two hours.

Featuring Farah Mendlesohn, Melanie Fishbane, Rebecca Fraimow, and Jed Hartman.

Audience participation welcome.

Advance registration (free) required. Sign up in either of these places: (1) Discussing the Female Man Tickets, Eventbrite; (2) Facebook.com

The Zoom link will be emailed to all registered attendees shortly before the panel.

(3) SWEDISH SMOFCON NOTES. Polish conrunning fan Marcin Klak, also known as Alqua, has posted a conreport “SMOFcon 42 – Don’t Panic and Appreciate Your Towel” at Fandom Rover.

SMOFcon 42 was my second in person Smofcon. It took me eight years to come back to this con, and my experience this time was quite different. Over the course of those years I learned a lot, and I met many people. Not to mention that the world itself has changed a lot too!…

… And last, but definitely not least, I want to mention about the Q&A sessions related to the future cons. I didn’t manage to participate in the whole session but I had the chance to see at least a part of it. Next year we may have, for the first time in years, three different bids for Worldcon. I was aware of two of those for some time – Brisbane, Australia, and Kigali, Rwanda. The third one was a recent development – Nuremberg, Germany. Only the last of those had the presentation in person. It was quite interesting and convincing. The team mentioned about the possibility to have a camping ground at the front of the venue. The other two bidders had to connect remotely to the session. The big surprise in Kigali presentation was an offer of 15% off on RwandAir tickets. Which of the bids would win is a mystery to me. I have good reasons to keep my fingers crossed for all three of them – each for different reasons. Site selection next year will be a tough decision for me….

(4) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to dish over dumplings with George Gene Gustines in Episode 271 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

George Gene Gustines

This episode’s guest has intrigued me ever since I first encountered him in the pages of the New York Times, one reason being that in an alternate universe, I could have been him. George Gene Gustines has worked at the paper for more than a third of a century, and during that time, he’s written hundreds of articles about comics books and comics-related pop culture events alone.

And the thing is — when I was a teenager attending the State University of New York at Buffalo and worked on the student newspaper, I continually tried to convince my editors to allow me to write about comics in addition to my other assignments. At the time, my plan was to be a journalist, with no inkling of my eventual career in comics. But if I’d continued on my original path, I can imagine I’d now be doing what Gustines does, and hope my editors would allow me cover the things I love for a mainstream audience as often as I could.

Gustines, like me, started out as a fan, and got his first letter published in an issue of The New Teen Titans when he was 16. He’s even gone on to write comics of his own, with an autobiographical graphic novel in the works. We talked about all of this over dinner at one of his favorite spots near the New York Times headquarters.

We discussed the reason what he’s pulled off would have been impossible a generation ago, why he calls himself “the Forrest Gump of the New York Times,” how he determines which potential articles are right for the paper and which are too inside baseball, what moved him to write his first letter to a comics editor (and his secret to getting them published frequently), why he loves superhero team books, the grace of George Perez, what defines a fan, the story he regrets being the first to report, what he does when not writing about comics, who he wishes he could have interviewed before they passed, what it takes to get an idea approved by his editors, when he rather than another writer gets to write comic book obituaries, his upcoming autobiographical graphic novel about how comics changed his life, the voicemail Stan Lee left which matches what you’d imagine “The Man” might say, how he intends to reach his goal of 1,000 bylines, and much more.

(5) SHELFIES. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was Shelfies #68: Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Photo at the link.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of The Bewitching, The Seventh Veil of Salome, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has won the Locus, British Fantasy and World Fantasy awards.

(6) VAMPIRIC HISTORY. “Shroud-chewers, lip-smackers and suckers populate this fascinating study of ‘the unquiet dead’ across the centuries.” “Killing the Dead by John Blair review – a gloriously gruesome history of vampires” in the Guardian.

The word “vampire” first appears in English in sensational accounts of a revenant panic in Serbia in the early 18th century. One case in 1725 concerned a recently deceased peasant farmer, Peter Blagojević, who rose from the grave, visited his wife to demand his shoes, and then murdered nine people in the night. When his body was disinterred, his mouth was found full of fresh blood. The villagers staked the corpse and then burned it. In 1745, the clergyman John Swinton published an anonymous pamphlet, The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, in which it is written: “These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves, in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living, and thereby destroy them.” And so a modern myth was born.

But it is not so modern, or exclusively European, as this extraordinary survey shows. Instead, the author, a historian and archeologist, argues that belief in the unquiet dead is found in many cultures and periods, where it can lay dormant for centuries before erupting in an “epidemic”, as in Serbia….

(7) ELEVATED LITERATURE. A Deep Look by Dave Hook is upward bound in “Climbing and Speculative Fiction”.

The Short: I decided to write an essay about climbing and speculative fiction after reading “Because It’s There”, a novelette by Susan Shwartz, Asimov’s November-December 2025. My essay covers characters doing all kinds of physical climbing I could imagine, such as mountains, rocks, ice, trees, cliffs, buildings, and such. My favorites are the superlative “Hothouse“, a novelette by Brian W. Aldiss, F&SF January 1961, that features tree climbing, and the classic “The Left Hand of Darkness“, a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969 Ace Books, which includes crossing a range of mountains (so perhaps an edge case, but close enough for me). Here is a link to my list of stories and novels that I read for this essay. I suspect I will get recommendations for more books and stories I should have included, which I look forward to!

(8) SPEAKING OF BALLARD. Which John Clute does in his latest post for Encyclopedia of Science Fiction’s Substack page – “Ballard, Brexit, and Filling the Gaps”. Read it and you will learn about “spomeniks”, a word that might come in handy sometime.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Galaxy Quest (1999)

By Paul Weimer: Galaxy Quest — the best movie about Star Trek fandom of all time?

Very possibly yes.

In the days before The Orville (which has neatly taken up the Galaxy’s Quest banner in some ways), Star Trek’s self importance was sometimes overweening. Oh, you could see and find some deflation of the seriousness of movies like Star Trek: the Motion Picture now and again in the Star Trek canon (Star Trek IV in particular). But the strong desire and passion of fans was something that was mocked for a long time, and by William Shatner himself.

On December 20, 1986, the infamous “Get a Life” sketch was aired on Saturday Night Live. It’s worth seeing if you haven’t seen it. People forget that at the end Shatner “recants” his rant against the fans and says he was just channeling “Evil Kirk”. Everyone remembers how for the first 6 minutes of the episode he rips and destroys the enthusiasm and geeky intense interest of those same fans.

So, Galaxy Quest is a corrective, I feel, to that sketch and those perceptions. And at the time I saw Galaxy Quest in 1999, I had been to one Star Trek convention (with Marina Sirtis and George Takei). I knew and know the passions of people for a property, a franchise, an imaginary future. I share them, after all.

Galaxy Quest channels all that, and with love and respect, but knowing how silly its own source material is, uses it. From the funky controls on the bridge, to the “choppers” in a passageway that Sigourney Weaver’s character calls out as being stupid, the movie shows the absurdity of following a property so closely. And yet in showing the absurdity of it, it also shows the love, respect, care and humanity of fans of a property. (Consider how the fans come together to help land the remnants of the ship). It’s a movie that touches the heart and knows when to cut from horror, to comedy, to moments of tenderness and pathos. There are few episodes, or movies of the actual Star Trek that can say the same.

And the casting is perfect. Tim Allen as the clueless captain? Sigourney Weaver, whose sole job is to repeat the computer? The late Alan Rickman, horrified that he has, by Grabthar’s Hammer, been permanently typecast? Tony Shalhoub as the slacker chief engineer? All of the cast understood the assignment and give the movie their all. The movie is peppy, doesn’t flag, and entertains thoroughly. It satirizes and respects and loves Star Trek, and its fans.

Also, in 2020, inspired by this movie, I went out of my way in my trip around the “Utah 5” to see Goblin Valley State Park, where the alien planet with the beryllium mine (and the rock monster) was filmed. Friends, it is as alien and weird as the movie makes it out to be.

Never give up, never surrender may be Captain Taggart’s catchphrase, but it’s some damn fine advice for life, too.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

xkcd solves an outlet problem.
BirdBrains has a question for the coroner.
Frank and Ernest adds another dimension to a classic.
Jerry King has a dating complaint.
Six Chix has a new concern.
Strange Brew asks a familiar question.
Tom the Dancing Bug charts human morality.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal knows where it’s hard to avoid disturbed land.

(11) CLASSIC BOK. The Bristol Board hosts 14 images by fantasy artist Hannes Bok. Includes this one — “Boomerang” from Famous Fantastic Mysteries (August 1947).

(12) LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS… [Item by Daniel Dern.] Heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday: “This metalworker is creating suits of armor for mice”. Dern notes, “This may help explain the Metal Munching Moon Mice (from the Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle).” Note, it also talks about armoring up cats, “Sometimes he makes cat armor too.”

… PRICHEP: This thing that started as something of a joke has become an art. And the armor, which we should note De Boer does not put on actual mice, are amazing. Hinged visors to protect a whiskered face, intricately detailed rivets and fittings and joined plates to cover the tail – they give nod to everything from Viking tradition to Indian empires to samurai helmets.

DE BOER: The nice thing with mouse scale is that you get to do a whole lot of neat things. You get to explore all of the different cultures, all the different forums.

PRICHEP: De Boer recently taught a mouse armor master class in Seattle. Students used sanding belts to smooth out wooden shapes to mold armor around….

(13) DON’T SOCK IT TO HIM. [Item by Steven French.] From the American Institute of Physics history newsletter, a seasonally appropriate piece about … Einstein’s socks (or lack thereof!):

….Yet Einstein’s medical history provides only part of the story. As Pesic points out, his decision about footwear had an ancient philosophical precedent in Socrates, who famously went barefoot in all weathers. Even during the bitter winter Battle of Potidaea, his companion Alcibiades marveled at how Socrates walked barefoot on ice better than other soldiers did in boots. For Socrates, going barefoot wasn’t merely comfortable; it was a practice of physical courage and endurance that reflected his philosophical commitment to truth. Einstein, who in 1927 admiringly compared his friend Michele Besso to Socrates as a “midwife” of thought, very likely would have known about Socrates’s status as a pioneer of the barefoot philosophical lifestyle.

The connection between Einstein and Socrates would have been reinforced by popular culture. Maxwell Anderson’s 1951 play Barefoot in Athens explicitly linked Socrates’s bare feet to his trial and martyrdom, with the character Xantippe lamenting that “Athens still wants beauty and glamor and success—not an old man in bare feet pointing out that the human race doesn’t know its ass from its elbow.” Performed in Princeton, New Haven, and on Broadway during the McCarthy era, audiences might well have connected this portrayal with Einstein’s own well-known socklessness, casting him as a latter-day Socratic questioner.

Einstein himself offered various explanations for his sockless state, often using humor. To photographer Alan Richards, he quipped that “it would be an awful situation if the containers were of better quality than the meat.” To his friend Peter Bucky, he claimed “simplicity” as a guiding principle—going without socks eliminated the need for anyone to darn them. To a neighbor, he emphasized mild rebellion: “I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.”…

(14) AVATAR INSIGHTS. The latest in the New York Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene” series where they ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. “How a Deadly Bond Develops in ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’”. Link bypasses the paywall.

…A new villain aligns with a familiar one in “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third installment in James Cameron’s franchise about the blue inhabitants of the distant earthlike moon Pandora. Arriving on the scene this time is Varang (Oona Chaplin), a passionate figure whose desire to rule is as strong as her desire to ruin.

In this scene, she has cornered Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the villain from the first film, and given him a psychedelic truth serum. It leads to a potential partnership that could fulfill many of Varang’s power-hungry needs. Narrating the scene, Cameron discusses some of the ideas behind it, how he worked with the actors through performance capture, and what techniques he employed to give the sequence a jittery spark….

(15) PICARD’S TORMENT. “Star Trek: TNG’s Darkest Episode Is Mandatory Viewing for Every Sci-Fi Fan” says CBR.com.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987, it proved to be a worthy successor to the original series from the outset. Benefiting from a world that took science fiction more seriously than the ’60s, the superior age of special effects helped make the show an instant classic. Above all else, fans praised it for its more thoughtful approach to the genre, delving into philosophy and politics even better than the William Shatner-led series. In the series’ penultimate season, Jean-Luc Picard was written into the darkest story of the series, a tale still relevant thirty-three years after it first aired: “Chain of Command.”…

… The episode “Chain of Command” follows Captain Picard as he leads Worf and Crusher on a clandestine mission to destroy a Cardassian biological weapons facility. However, when he’s captured by the enemy forces, he’s held captive while the new commander of the Enterprise, Captain Edward Jellico, attempts to navigate the situation. While held by the Cardassians, he’s subjected to extreme psychological torture by Gul Madred, an enemy commander. The central part of his torment involves placing Jean-Luc before four lights and forcing him to “accept” that there are five.

As tensions escalate between the Federation and Cardassians, Madred’s interrogation and conditioning of Picard also intensifies. With his crew racing desperately to get him released, the captain does his best to withstand the enemy’s tactics, but grows visibly weaker as the story progresses….

…. The episode is among the franchise’s darkest moments, giving the audience a rare glimpse at a form of torture that hits close to home. Since the story’s release, the world has reckoned with real torture scandals that only make the episode more grim in hindsight….

(16) PULLMAN CONSIDERED. [Item by Steven French.] Matthew Cantor in the Guardian ponders the significance of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials: “Truth in fantasy: what Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials taught us over its 30-year run”.

Pullman has spoken at length about his trepidation about the fantasy genre; he never wanted to be a JRR Tolkien type, inventing a world for its own sake. Instead, “I had to try to use all my various invented creatures – the daemons, the armored bears, the angels – to say something I thought was true and important about us, about being human, about growing up and living and dying,” he said in a 2002 speech. “This, finally, is what I think the value of fantasy is: that it’s a great vehicle when it serves the purposes of realism, and a lot of old cobblers when it doesn’t.” Two trilogies have shown us Lyra’s world is very real. A much-graffitied bench in the Oxford Botanic Garden is proof….

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, Jed Hartman, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Profile: The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Mike Glyer

By James Bacon: Many Filers will no doubt be aware of this significant and beautiful comic, but the tenth anniversary allows one to share a brilliant work amongst readers who will appreciate it.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew is an incredible comic. In its presentation, we meet the fictitious Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a comic artist, and we follow his life, an autobiographical story, but one that takes the shape of his comic book career and is infused with his perception of the history of Singapore. There is a depth to the story that is captivating. It is layered, and full of imaginative brilliance. The Singaporean history is shared with the reader through Charlie’s story, and the stories that Charlie and his friend Bertrand produce and have published and the comics that Charlie never had published.

Charlie and Bertrand are not only comic fans and creators, but acutely conscious of the political landscape around them, and through their skilled ability to tell stories, we see comics telling contemporary stories that are artistically inspired by comics from other countries, and filled with political satire, allegorical brilliance, and imaginative extrapolations of what was occurring. They offer a profound championing and criticism of the sociopolitical state of the moment. Charlie is very politically minded and this comes through in his comics and comic strips.

The reality is, of course, that this is the awareness of Sonny Liew, not just an assiduously monumental work with a detailed and conscientious knowledge of history. It also shows a superb appreciation and affection for comic books through the decades. Sonny’s ability to combine the poignant in such a readable and accessible way, in a wide selection of artistic styles, emulating what a comic of the time would look like, while all the time carrying the narrative in a very clear way, with added illustrations, be it in pencils, or pen and brush or water colour, illustrative, gorgeous and painterly in style. As a comic reader and someone who enjoys history, his is a very carefully thought out homage to the world of comics with this unique and authentic setting, giving the comic book reader a comprehensive work, an entertaining history on many levels.

The realities of Singaporean history are confronted in the comic. We see that while Charlie uses incredibly clever allegorical techniques, as he himself shares what was occurring to him and those around him, the historical timeline is the back bone of the comic. We also follow Charlie, as Sonny Liew brilliantly shares this imagined life with the reader. Sonny creates a very human connection that captures the reader in Charlie’s story, subtly drawing in emotional feelings and creating a personal resonance and investment.

One only wants the best for Charlie, and while there is not a huge amount of the inter-personal, one does hope for him, whether it be following his own imaginations with Lilly, or with his family or how he later portrays how things might have been.

There is an incredible respect and appreciation of this imagined character, as we learn and see the history through his comics. We also see Sonny Liew speaking in strips in parallel. Many of the comics, illustrations, and comic strips have really detailed and helpful explanations and extrapolations that allow the reader insight through satire, social commentary and beautiful allegory into Singaporean history, ensuring that the reader can follow, interpret and understand the comics, in an easy way.

Charlie is stoic about the human moments and challenges that he faces. He is drawn to the purpose of creating comics, even as he works on comics as a solitary soul, and imagines a success that eludes him, while also passing on elements of the comic craft and passion for comics. It is such an intelligent fusion of artistic ability on the part of Sonny Liew, drawing on many artistic aspects and thoughtful storytelling to create this work.

There is an accessibility to a detailed history, in this form, that on reflection is astonishing, perhaps it is the variety of comic book styles, resonating and homaging the great works of a given time, the references and appreciation that Charlie has for comics, so that the book is laced with moments of recognition, or for me, delight as I see how a well known style or comic has been reborn into something similar, but different and telling Singaporean History. As a comic reader, I recall how reading the first couple of pages, I was hooked when Charlie says in a sequence of five panels:

As for me, I was born in the year of nothing. 1938.

Well as far as Singapore History is concerned anyway… 1938.

It was before the War, not a year of any particular significance.

But it was the year that The Beano first appeared in the UK…

and Superman made his Debut in The United States.

In the relevant panels, we see Dennis the Menace and Gnasher leaning in from the side, and then we see Superman flying overhead, as Charlie looks up, as he mentions him, and it felt very much so pitch perfect.

There are then a variety of comic book styles deployed, representing both the history of the time, and some great comics, where the influences are clearly noted, and this allows for excellent transitions, as we understand visually that it is a different phase, but it also adds a level of interest and excitement, that is both sustaining and compelling, as one realizes that there is a considerable amount of history being very skillfully imparted to the reader, a political history, that is detailed, and has what one might call, grey areas, that needs to be explored and explained.

We see the early work, which is so full of positivity and energy, but reflecting the colonial situation of the time in Ah Hauts Giant Robot and then as Charlie and his friend Bertrand progress and develop, we see that their war comic series Force 136 progresses from comics like Commando, which is shown, to a more darker and accurate portrayal of War comics, as embodied by Front Line Combat, and the readers understand the development.

We see Charlie and Bertrand work up mock ups of a comic called Dragon, which was based on Eagle, in look and one of the stories “Invasion” was influenced by Dan Dare, and while artistically one can see the source visually, it is in itself clearly distinctive in its own rendition. This is a Science Fictional story of a boy, Tommy Tan, who wakes up 120 years after being cryogenically frozen to prevent him dying, to find that his home, Lunar City, has been taken over by the Hegeamons, an alien race. He finds Dr Wei, who brings him up to date, and we see that Tommy wants to fight, as his illness was not cured, and we see that he joins the resistance, the freedom fighters, who are Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew, the historical figures from Singaporean history, and we see the thumbnails, and preparatory sketches, and we learn of the story, as we see mock ups of the comic, that Charlie and Bertrand hope to see published.

“Bukit Chapalong” is another story intended for Dragon, but in a different style, using anthropomorphic cartoon style animals, influenced by Walt Kelly’s Pogo, also representing public figures, utilizing satire and clever changes to words creating allegorical representations of politicians, countries and situations. The parts of the story that we see bring us through from seeking independence, to the time of Singapore’s merger and separation with Malaya.

“Roachman” features a Night Soil Man, representing Lim Chin Siong, who is humble and he is bitten by a cockroach that empowers him, and so he turns into a superhero who fights for good and the people. This comic was influenced by The Spirit, but has elements of Batman, and the comic utilized contemporary issues which are shown in newspaper clippings as a source of inspiration for stories. Later when we hear of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Charlie ponders if they stole the idea from “Roachman”, which is wonderful as readers smile at what is occurring here. The subject material in the comics are obviously adult in nature, and are aimed at adults, but the contemporary aspects are of course historical, and give a social and human aspect to the history, beyond the politics, while still sharing the timeline.

“Sinkapor Inks Stationery and Supplies” portrays Singapore as a stationary company, run by a very aggressive and stern boss, Mr Hairily, who was a representation of Harry Lee Kuan Yew and also then a new boss, who had a more insidious approach, based on his successor Gek Chok Tong, and we see that the company news letter is a perilous and precarious role, as any complaints, even constructive, or representative of clients, is unacceptable, and we learn how the media is controlled through two different phases of government.

Throughout the book, there are Oil on Canvas portraits, some are examples of Charlie’s work when he was doing stars: Yu Ming, Audrey Hepburn, Peter Cushing, and also some are people who are key to the story, such as Charlie’s Mother “Ma” which is a beautiful painting and the likes of “Prime Minister” a painting of Lee Kian Hew in 1970, a powerful image and then him again in 2012, entitled “Time and Tide”.

We see the hope, the desire as Charlie goes to San Diego Comic Con, like so many artists, with a portfolio to show professionals, and this has two sequences, and it is very thoughtful, and reminds one of the challenges that artists and writers face, and their aspirations, and commitment.

“Days of August” is an alternative history, as Charlie finds inspiration from Phillip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle and influenced by the style of The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Here the real history that we have been learning about, is turned on its head, as we see Lim Chiang Song leading the Barisan Sosialos party to win 1963 election. There is a hint of sadness on many levels for the reader in this portion of the comic, as we see that Charlie has achieved huge success, and was feted by all, including Lilly, and opens a museum dedicated to his work. The comic was completed, only when Lee Juan Yew stepped down as Prime Minister, and Charlie felt able and returned to it, initially he was unsure where he was going with it, we see that Lim Chiang Song and himself travel back to pre independence Singapore, in 1955, and we see him wish Lim best wishes, and calls him “Prime Minister” as Charlie goes and buys some American comics

It was a feeling I had forgotten

The simple pleasure of reading comics

Not worrying about whether it was good or bad. If it was going to sell or not

Just a feeling of wanting to draw, to tell stories

This is a powerful part of the comic, layered, as we have an alternative history comic within the comic book history of the imagined Charlie, a meta moment, in a meta story. The comic does not end there, and we see that Charlie has ideas for a comic influenced by Carl Barks and Scrooge McDuck, entitled “Dato Duck in Singapore”, which is a 2015 work in development by Charlie, reflecting on the financial centre that Singapore possesses in the global finance sphere.

A new edition has been released to mark the tenth anniversary release of the comic, there are multiple covers to choose from, and there is a selection of additional material, including comic pages, and the book has a number of notes, and an afterward by Paul Gravett, all creating quite the package for the keen reader.

Sonny Liew was nineteen years old, when he first sought to get his comic strip Frankie and Poo published. The New Paper picked it up and Sonny has said that this work “was meant to be a social political commentary”^[1]

Sonny faced challenges, and had “ups and downs” which makes one think about Charlie’s up and down moments, but one cannot underestimate the determination he demonstrated in regards to this comic. The comic took two years of work, by Sonny’s reckoning, but he also had to earn money, so he was working on it over a period of time much longer than that. He became aware of the potential controversial nature of the work as he progressed, and being a Malaysian on a permanent residence Visa, he applied for Singaporean citizenship.

Here, Sonny was preparing and readying himself, in the knowledge that the book could be challenging and create problems for him, but he pursued this. The book was read, to ensure that it was accurate, research was crucial, it needed to be “factually sound”^[2] and not just leftist views or opinions and it was read by a lawyer, before being published.

The National Arts Council were supporting the publisher Epigram with a grant, but when they saw the final work, despite having seen the script, they were not at all happy as Sonny explained on Comics Beat:

the National Arts Council (NAC) decided to withdraw the publishing grant for the book after they took a closer look at the book, for supposedly undermining the authority of the government. It was worrying for a while, given how wafer thin book profit margins can be. But then the news broke on social media, and we got a ton of free publicity for the book, and we sold a lot more copies than the publisher had ever anticipated^[3]

There was then some stock adjustment, as the original copies had the National Arts Logo on them, and this needed to be removed, the solution was a sticker.

These aspects of the work only add appreciation and respect, as Sonny was clear in his vision, of sharing this history, despite the potential consequences, and the actual consequences, which were thankfully overcome.

There is a sequence in the book, where the Sinkapor Inks Stationery and Supplies business which is an incredibly brilliant satirical allegory for the leadership of Singapore, and the bosses are based on the Prime Ministers, and one explains about the OB Markers. At the same time, running parallel is a comic strip of Sonny, helpfully explaining what OB MArkers were:

“Out of bound markers, the invisible shifting boundaries delineating the areas of acceptable public discourse”^[4]

I immediately thought of Freedom of the Press by George Orwell, and reflected on the concept of insidious power, and the fear of it, and how a pernicious leadership can induce self censorship, the red line of a censors pencil is not even needed, for those in the business have too much at risk to cross this unseen but known boundary.

Sonny Liew started thinking about a book about capitalism, some eight years ago and that presents something for readers to look forward to, which looks at both US Capitalism, from the Great Depression onwards as well as Singaporean capitalism and this is something that readers can look forward to.

I was in Singapore, and there has been considerable celebration, talks and signings, and three exhibitions, cohesively presented and well choreographed making good use of the space, and presenting a really overall superb selection of art for fans of the comic to enjoy. The presentations are in Knuckles and Notch Chaos Gallery, Basheer Graphic Books, and InkInk. The presentation in all venues were strong and the additional materials added to the experience, it was all very thoughtful and well considered and is a credit to Sonny Liew, “Singapore’s greatest comic artist”, and all involved, and it was an absolute pleasure that I got to meet him and enjoy his work up close when I was visiting Singapore. (Full article on Down the Tubes “In Review: Ten Years of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew – A Singaporean Celebration”.)

The winners write history, and it is always a battle to research and bring forth authentic and genuine perspectives, of what happened or is happening in our world, comics have done this incredibly well at times, and we can look to Maus by Art Speigleman, Palestine by Joe Sacco, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) by Keiji Nakazawa, Charley’s War by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and recognize that The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye and Sonny Liew entered the pantheon of the greatest comics presenting poignant stories, by the greatest creatives.

[Click for larger images.]

We are living in a time when the importance of the narrative, of controlling the narrative, is a huge fight across media, truth and accuracy are continually maimed and injured by the ongoing fight and even war for the narrative, it will be interesting to see how contemporary times are reflected on in the future, and if a work as powerful of Sonny Liew’s will come to the fore.

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew is a wonderful, it is a seminal work of Singaporean literature comics, that not only offers the reader insight into Singapore history, helps us reflect and prompts thinking, and perhaps wonder about some of the tactics and techniques and occurrences, and political manoeuvring of this moment and reflect on exactly what we might be missing ourselves, from our own pasts, as well as watching what is happening right now, while demonstrating just how dynamic and beautiful the art of comic books can be.

[Notes, links and references follow the jump.]

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