26 That Is Not Filed Which Can Unscrolling Lie; And With Strange Pixels, Even Death May Die

Posted on August 24, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) ALPHA AND OMEGA MEN. “The Man Who Saw Humanity From Two Billion Years Away” – Olaf Stapledon is profiled in The MIT Press Reader.

… Stapledon’s imagination is profuse. He can be read as a compendium of science fiction ideas: his “Odd John” (1935) with its homo superior and titular telepathic character seeds the ground for Marvel’s X-Men; in “Star Maker” (1937) he describes the stellar structure that Freeman Dyson conceptualized as the Dyson sphere; in “Last and First Men” and its sequel, 1932’s “Last Men in London,” human evolution is driven across millennia to produce telepathy, as in Frank Herbert’s “Dune”; in the age of the Fifth Men, the Moon is destroyed and falls to Earth, raining down destruction and driving further evolution of the species — Neal Stephenson’s masterful pan-generational novel “Seveneves” is powered by the same conceit.

A further astonishing influence, traced by the scholar Dominic Moran, is upon Jorge Luis Borges and his short story “El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan” (1941), or “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Borges reviewed Stapledon and went on to cite a section of “Star Maker” that anticipates the idea of the multiverse. The “many worlds” theory of quantum mechanics would not be proposed until 1957, nearly 20 years after Stapledon’s speculation of a creature capable of taking many possible courses of action at once, with each choice creating a new dimension in time.

A science fiction author could spend their career turning Stapledon’s speculative paragraphs into novels.

The long future of “Last and First Men” is influenced by the interwar concern with deep time. Doris Lessing observed that surely what was going on in archaeology in the period inspired Stapledon: The early 20th century was marked by the rediscovery of civilizations such as the Olmec mother culture in the Americas, the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb, and the excavation of the Hittite capital that proved they were a genuine civilization and not solely a Biblical one. Lessing’s own science fiction sequence, “Canopus in Argos: Archives,” first published in 1979, is a similarly eon-spanning future history.

The different generations of Stapledon’s humankind evolve under pressure from cultural and environmental effects. Their advances leave a mark on the Earth, and the Earth violently reacts. This anticipates a key theme of the 21st century, the Anthropocene, the theory that humanity has left evidence of itself in the geological record, thus making our mark in deep time.

(2) KEEPING THE WOW IN BOW-WOW. Camestros Felapton’s series on robots and such devotes a chapter to our best robotic friend: “Ch70: K9 and Robot Dogs”.

… Yes, there are other domesticated animals that humans have adopted to do labour for us. However, dogs are among the oldest and have been adapted to roles that require a degree of intelligence and judgement. Dogs, as guards, hunters, and herders, as well as more broadly as companions, occupy multiple roles in human societies. There are many parallels between the social role of dogs and the depiction of the roles of robots in fiction. This is less obvious in the cases where robots are shown as being fully intelligent (typically when they are central or major characters), but is more apparent when robots are just part of a general futuristic background.

The comparison is problematic because the depiction and social role of fictional robots frequently overlap with historical depictions of slavery. Of course, slave-owning cultures have also tended to treat enslaved people as livestock and assigned to them the same status as domesticated animals. Robots in their original coining in R.U.R. are shown as people who can be owned and treated as manufactured goods – a state of being that leads to their eventual revolt and destruction of humanity.

Presenting robots in a less human shape is a way of asserting a different status to them. There are real practical reasons for producing actual robotic machines (i.e. machines with a degree of autonomy, flexibility in tasks they can do, and sensory capability) in forms other than humanoid. Arguably, a human shape is a particularly bad design for a machine, even one that is intended to walk rather than roll about on wheels.

So it is not surprising that among the myriad non-humanoid shapes for robots, a common one is that of the dog.

Westinghouse’s 1940 exhibition robot Elektro, for example, came with a robotic companion dog, Sparko who could sit and bark. Really, Sparko is more of an automaton than what we would call a robot, but the same could be said of Elektro….

(3) MIÉVILLE AND MORE. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian’s list of books to look out for this autumn includes the sequel to The Time Traveller’s Wife and … “From Booker-listed Marlon James to a memoir by Michael Douglas – the biggest books this autumn”.

The Rouse by China Miéville
Picador, 17 September
A leading light of the New Weird, Miéville has been working on this stonking 1,000-page supernatural fantasy for two decades. Political intrigue, continent-hopping global conspiracy and uncanny mysteries unfold.

(4) SUSAN WOOD REMEMBERED. Eli Cohen reminds Facebook readers this is the 50th anniversary of Susan Wood’s groundbreaking feminist sf panel at MidAmeriCon.

…Per Fancyclopedia, “In 1976, she was instrumental in organizing the first feminist panel at a science fiction convention, at MidAmeriCon. Reaction to this helped lead to the founding of A Women’s APA and of WisCon.”

From Susan’s worldcon report in Amor 11, Oct. 30, 1976:
I chaired a women-and-sf panel at Discon II. It was not, um, wildly successful in content (I didn’t choose the panelists, and I only met two of them as we went onstage); it was allotted an hour, and ended just as things got interesting. It did however, make people-especially women– think about sf as a male-dominated (14-year-old-male-dominated) field; and it did give women a focus, a place/time to come together, to find each other, to go off into groups and share. I wanted that to happen again–to happen more fully and easily, in a more supportive, satisfying way. So I proposed and organized a women’s event [for MidAmeriCon].

It worked. You know, it worked. The problems piled up: writing endless letters to get panelists together (many women writers and fans weren’t going to worldcon because they’d given up on the sf community, I think; on the other hand, they were all supportive and helpful, even in the letters saying “sorry, I’m not going, ask so-and-so); using all the patience and restraint and diplomacy I could muster, to get this thing on despite the attitudes of the concom, who treated the “girl’s panel” as either a joke or a threat (“We don’t want any screaming Joanna Russ types on the panel, remember”); dealing with the cold which turned into laryngitis on the morning of the panel (I forced my voice, which meant I couldn’t be as flexible, or in control of tone and nuance as I wished, and meant too that I lost it completely for the rest of the con, but kept talking with people anyway… ) Well: even if the inherent sexism of fandom, of this concom, raised several hundred consciousnesses (ask Dena Brown, disenfranchised Hugo co-winner); even if the new ugly anti-woman threatened mood of sf-dom was voiced loudly from the platform by Jerry Pournelle, and echoed in a hundred ways, from the masquerade to the “Lighter Side of Sexism” panels (at one point, the “real” women’s panel was threatened with cancellation, but there were slots open for dirty jokes: is racism funny? are you going to laugh at a problem to pretend it isn’t a problem, forever?)– even if sf’s vision of human potentials is still distorted: we did come together. The panelists– Kate Wilhelm, who is one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met; Suzy McKee Charnas; Amanda Bankier; and Marta Randall– were articulate, reasoned, interesting, and kept an audience of, I estimate, 300 people quiet and fixed in their seats for an hour and a half. Then– and I had been insisting, quietly, on this– we adjourned to a smaller room, for informal discussions. And in that small, stuffy, unbearably hot little room, we talked, and talked, and talked… The discussion, of 75 people or more, tended to be too general– I had hoped for a workshop situation, lots of separate groups, but that didn’t come about, people tried to make me into Teacher, a role my throat and I rejected. Some people got off onto, for others, irrelevancies (The Pronoun Issue), though there was a recognition I think, that each one of us has a specific chosen battlefront. I got to meet some good people; we all got to meet each other. Everywhere I went, for the next four days, was someone– man or woman–to say “Hey. That was great– to meet people who feel the way I do.” And we would talk (or I would croak) as long as we could…

Isn’t that what fandom is all about?

Remarkably, there is a video recording of the panel. The video is part of the Video Archeology project coordinated by Geri Sullivan, with technical work by David Dyer-Bennet. “MidAmeriCon (1976) Worldcon Panel: Women in SF: Their Right and Proper Place”.

(5) HUGO IN ORBIT. And Glenn Glazer told Facebook readers about a more recent memorable moment: “In 2016, Kjell was one of the guests of honor for Sasquan. He was aboard the ISS during the convention and transmitted down a speech for the opening ceremonies and a few other things, including these pics. The rocket in the pictures was not one of the ones used in the ceremony and it was also slightly smaller and lighter due to NASA weight regulations. Kjell took it into space with him and sent down the photos. I think he kept the rocket as a souvenir, so I guess you could say it is his rocket.

“To this day, I believe it is the only Hugo rocket to have actually been in space.”

(6) FROM SLEEPOVER TO CREEPOVER. [Item by Steven French.] The Atlas Obscura asks a question we’re all been pondering: “Why Are So Many Horror Movies Set at Summer Camp?”

IN THE ATTIC OF A rural cabin, two teenagers are making out. As things get hot and heavy, the camera tracks them with a voyeuristic gaze. Suddenly the young couple spring apart, caught in the act by an unseen interloper. Then the knife comes out, delivering the classic slasher movie punishment for sex. A minute later, both kids are dead.

Even if you haven’t seen it, this scene likely sounds familiar—as will the overall gist of Friday the 13th, which involves a group of summer camp counselors being picked off by a mysterious killer.

It’s a classic of the American slasher formula, a genre that took off after the demise of Hays Code censorship in 1968. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas both arrived in 1974, with John Carpenter’s Halloween coming out in 1978. Thanks to Friday the 13th (1980), summer camps became a popular recurring location.

Of course, popularity doesn’t necessarily denote artistic merit. The 1980s slasher movies were frequently accused of being exploitative and misogynistic, with contemporary reviews labeling Friday the 13th “shamelessly bad” and “nauseating.” Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert singled it out as a notably unpleasant example of the genre. However that didn’t stop the masked killer Jason Voorhees from becoming a Hollywood juggernaut, slicing and dicing his way through 11 sequels. Meanwhile other filmmakers released a slew of copycats (Madman, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, Twisted Nightmare…), enthusiastically butchering a generation of fictional campers. As it turned out, summer camp embodied a perfect combination of ingredients for slasher cinema.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 24, 1957 — Stephen Fry, 69.

By Paul Weimer: Sure, he’s done a ton of voiceover work and narration work. Sure, he’s been in a bunch of movies (including delightfully the master of Lake-town in the otherwise not-for-me Hobbit movies). Fry has run a long gamut of work, and I have only scratched the surface of it. I probably should mention Blackadder here, because I will get complaints if I don’t. I really like his serial playing of various Melchett’s in history as the series runs forward.

He is for me, an American, a “definitive” British voice. If I want to stop and imagine a British person speaking who I don’t know personally, Fry’s voice is inevitably the male version of that voice that comes into my head, just because between audiobooks, videogames, and television and movie appearances, he has poured a lot of his voice into my head. (The definitive female British voice is a bit trickier, it might actually be Emma Newman, who I do know personally, but her voice and aural personally are just so ingrained in my head).

My favorite of Fry’s works, if I have to peel something out of his canon, have to be his three Mythos books: Mythos, Heroes and Troy. Here (and he does the audiobook narration himself, great fun to listen to on a long drive), Fry tackles Greek Mythology from Creation to the Fall of Troy, which he marks as the end of the mythic age of Greece. He embraces a diverse and bushy approach to Greek Mythology and time and again shows that there is rarely if ever just one version of a Greek myth.

And a bunch of the versions Fry goes into here, I had never even heard of before. And plenty of corners of Greek Myth I had never heard of before…like the ties between Heracles and Troy (and eventually the Trojan War). Fry’s work makes me sad that Hollywood will never take my dream of a “Greek Mythology cinematic universe” and make it a reality, with Jason as the Nick Fury analog: “I’m here to recruit you for the Argo Initiative”.

Oh, and I really like Making History, which is most definitively genre of the first order (being a time travel and alternate history novel) and shows the hazards of thinking that removing one man can change history for the better….especially when it turns out the person who fills the power vacuum in removing Hitler turns out to be demonstrably more dangerous and worse for the world. Sure, he’s done a ton of voiceover work and narration work. Sure, he’s been in a bunch of movies (including delightfully the master of Lake-town in the otherwise not-for-me Hobbit movies). Fry has run a long gamut of work, and I have only scratched the surface of it. I probably should mention Blackadder here, because I will get complaints if I don’t. I really like his serial playing of various Melchett’s in history as the series runs forward.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Brewster Rockit shares today’s thing to worry about.
Eek! didn’t see this coming.
Free Range knows where he is.
Loose Parts features an unappreciated invention.
Pluggers call these something else.
Strange Brew finds unexpected efficiencies.
Tom Gauld’s travelers are compulsively literate.

(9) ABOUT THE FOODPRINTERS IN MY NOVELS. [Item by Mark Roth-Whitworth.] “Hard to swallow? The future of snacking may be 3D-printed cookies made from upcycled plastic” reports the Guardian.

Cookies produced from upcycled plastic may sound like something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi plot. But researchers say that they have succeeded in creating such a product as part of a Nasa-funded project aimed at feeding astronauts on future space missions.

The technology uses specially designed yeasts to transform plastics and agricultural waste into edible proteins, fats and flavourings. The resulting slurry is passed through a 3D printer to create a disc-shaped “cookie”.

“My lab works on developing technologies for plastic upcycling,” said Dr Lahiru Jayakody, a microbiologist at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale, who led the project. “We thought, why not look into food? Plastic is carbon and food is carbon.”

The team are yet to receive institutional sign-off to taste the plastic-derived cookies but report that they “receive high marks on aroma”….

…In this case, the researchers took one of the most common forms of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is often the sole ingredient in single-use water bottles. First the PET is “digested” using a process involving water and oxygen at high temperature and pressure to break down tough material into smaller carbon-rich molecules. These are then fed to yeast, which have been genetically reprogrammed to use the plastic-derived molecules as food.

The yeast converts the carbon from plastic into new biological molecules, including proteins, fats and other nutrients, which can be mixed with starch and shaped into edible products. A different strain was used to produce vanilla flavouring from plant biomass….

(10) DRONE WARFARE. “A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I.” – the New York Times has the story. (Behind a paywall.)

The young woman ran for her life, but it was too late.

A small Russian drone resembling a model airplane swooped down from the sky last month in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. As it tried to navigate toward a gas station, it crashed into a wall and exploded in a hail of shrapnel, killing Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others.

They were among the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have died in Russian airstrikes, but the circumstances of their deaths came with an ominous twist. The drone that killed them was guided by an experimental artificial intelligence system, not a human pilot, according to drone experts, Ukrainian military commanders and the forensic team that examined wreckage from the deadly strike and others in the city.

The drone was programmed by human operators to travel toward a particular gas station, but once it got close, it chose its exact target — most likely propane tanks — on its own, based on its training to recognize such tanks and strike them, the experts and military officials said.

It is a development long watched for in the war in Ukraine, presaging a dystopian future in which killer robots roam the skies making life-or-death decisions that reduce targets to data points.

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of air defenses in Zaporizhzhia. “In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”…

(11) SUN IS READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Chris Reeve Superman film had a detailed shot of the Sun. Today’s Nature journal has it for real….

Seething sun

The cover shows the most detailed image of the Sun’s surface taken to date. Captured by David Kuridze, Friedrich Woeger and colleagues using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the image offers a snapshot of the dynamics in the photosphere, the thin layer of the Sun’s atmosphere where its plasma becomes transparent, allowing light to escape. The researchers analyse their observations in this week’s issue, noting that the solar surface seems to be dominated by band-like and vortex-like structures. The team associates these with Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities, rippled structures that form when two fluids slide past each other at different speeds. These instabilities had long been thought to exist on the solar surface, but this is the first time so many have been seen and in such detail, potentially opening fresh avenues of research into the Sun’s magnetically active regions.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by N.] A critique from Princess Weekes on House of the Dragon‘s handling of Rhaena and Nettles, against the larger backdrop of the tension between fantasy and race: “Why the Rhaena and Nettles Merger Doesn’t Work”.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/23/26 You’re Scrolling Into Another Dimension, The Signpost Up Ahead, The Pixel Scroll

Posted on August 23, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) BREVITY. Ancillary Review of Books presents “Gernsback’s Grandchildren; or, A History Of The Hugo Awards In Seventy Sentences” by William Shaw. “A poem composed of one sentence from every individual winner of the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, 1955-2025.” It begins –

Let us not rely on the dubious assistance of Biblical characters.
It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican.

It was a beautiful machine, light, low-slung, swift, red and shining.
That was the train the drunks and the sinners rode — the gambling men and the grifters, the big-time spenders, the skirt-chasers, and all the jolly crew…

(2) FUTURE WORLDCON Q&A. Detailed interrogations next year’s seated Worldcon and the bids for the following three years are available from LAcon V’s webpage “Future Worldcon/Worldcon Bid Questionnaires”.

The following organizations planning for, or bidding for, future Worldcons have provided answers to questionnaires supplied to them by LAcon V. Please select from the following to view these questionnaires (each link will open in a new window).

(3) LATEST HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION CONTROVERSY. Brian Keene explained it in his “8/20/26” blog entry.

If your social media and Discord channels are full of horror writers talking about the most recent HWA (Horror Writers Association) scandal, you might be forgiven for any confusion as to which particular scandal at the moment, because there are multiple, including the fact that — with an election only a few weeks away — the only Presidential candidate (who was running unopposed) has stepped down after some allegations were made online….

… Anyway, the latest of all the latest HWA controversies is that Brett Talley, a horror writer who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice, and who was nominated by Donald Trump to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in 2017 (he later withdrew from nomination after several controversies), was revealed to be the person in charge of HWA’s Grievance Committee. That’s an important position. If you, as a dues paying HWA member, have a grievance — let’s say a publisher ripped you off or a fellow author slipped you a roofie and had their way with you at an official event — and you file a confidential report, then Talley is the person in charge of handling that information and acting upon it. The controversy surrounding this stems from three things: 1) Talley’s only the third judicial nominee since 1989 to receive a unanimous rating of Not Qualified from the American Bar Association, and 2) Talley appears (according to Buzzfeed, Slate, and other media venues) to have made comments in which he showed support for Nathan Bedford Forrest and “The early KKK”, and falsely claimed that during reconstruction, the KKK did not engage in violence or racism, and also allegedly supported a 20-year old having sex with a 14-year old, and 3) some among the dues paying membership state they were not aware of his position inside the organization.

You can probably understand why a writer of color or an LGBTQ+ author might have concerns about filing a private concern with him. To the best of my knowledge, Talley has not clarified or apologized for these past comments….

(4) THE PAYOFF. Emma Adler tries to understand why “Every Novel Is Boring—Until It Isn’t”, and shares her musing at Public Books.

With almost every novel I read, I go through the same arc. At first the novel bores me. Then, suddenly, it becomes the most interesting thing in the world. Suddenly, I have made it through the part that was creating my investment in the novel—and now it is all payoff. Now the novel is not just something whose artistry I can appreciate, but something I first order want to keep reading.

I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. At this juncture, the speaker of the poem adopts a new perspective on whatever he has been discussing. (In Italian, one meaning of volta is “turn.”)

Rather than a shift in perspective, the volta in a novel is a shift to visceral enjoyment. Even as someone who loves novels, I rely on my expectation of a volta to keep me going. I push through unpromising beginnings, even middles, trusting that eventually, something will click, and then reading will become not just easy but compulsive. If you told me before I started a novel that there wouldn’t be a volta (as occasionally there isn’t), I would never open it.

But what causes the volta to arrive? To help me with this essay, several of my friends agreed to read the same novel, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, and then tell me when they had experienced the volta while reading it. For one, the volta arrived after just 20 pages. For another it was triggered around page 75, after a disclosure made by a character who briefly takes over narrating the novel cast the previous events of the story in a new light. I experienced the volta a little later, when the return of the usual narrator made it clear to me how the plots of the novel were on a collision course.

Unlike the volta of a sonnet—which a teacher could fairly ask you to mark with a pen—the volta of a novel is subjective. It arrives for people at different moments depending on their sensibilities as readers. But the volta is also a near universal part of novel reading. Based on the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence I have gathered, most readers of most novels experience a volta at some point…

(5) HITTING THE BRICKS. “Nearly $30k in LEGO sets stolen from train found in San Bernardino County” reports CBS2 Los Angeles.

One of the 123 boxes of McLaren F1 LEGO sets located in an abandoned vehicle in Barstow.

Nearly $30,000 in stolen LEGO sets that were allegedly taken from a cargo train were located in San Bernardino County on Monday.

Exact details regarding the discovery were not released, but in a social media post, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department officials said that a deputy located an abandoned van with “several large boxes inside” in Barstow.

According to the post, the deputy contacted BNSF Railway Police because of a string of recent train burglaries in the area.

“BNSF Police confirmed the boxes were connected to a recent boxcar burglary and took possession of the recovered property,” the post said. “Inside the van were 123 boxes of McLaren F1 LEGO sets, valued at approximately $230 each, for a total estimated value of $28,290.”

The LA Times adds context in its story: “Nearly $30,000 worth of Legos recovered from train burglary, officials say”. (Behind a paywall.)

…Cargo thefts are a pervasive problem in isolated stretches of the Mojave Desert, where thieves board slow-moving freight trains to steal high-value merchandise, sometimes slashing an air brake hose to bring the railcars to an emergency stop. Such thefts have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 75,000 incidents reported in 2025, according to industry estimates compiled by the Assn. of American Railroads. The trade group attributes the rise to organized criminal networks.

The cargo is typically loaded into box trucks, or hidden in nearby brush until the trucks arrive. These tactics are often employed by transnational criminal groups that consist primarily of Mexican citizens from Sinaloa state, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent said in affidavits filed in federal court last year. A string of such heists in 2024 and 2025 resulted in the thefts of nearly $2 million worth of Nike sneakers, according to investigators.

More recently, in June, a rail car loaded with lithium-ion batteries caught fire as it was being burglarized in the Cajon Pass, authorities and railroad representatives said….

(6) A WHALE OF A TALE, AND I SWEAR THAT IT’S ALL TRUE. [Item by Steven French.] The title of this piece immediately made me think of The Jonah Kit by the late, great Ian Watson: “An echo of Einstein: An unexpected link between whale calls and special relativity” at Phys.org.

Standing on the sandy, windswept shores of Provincetown, Massachusetts, people may find themselves squinting at the horizon, waiting for a whale to make its grand entrance with a spectacular breach. On a good day, they might spot a couple. But for a more precise and consistent way to detect the presence of whales, oceanographers like John Spiesberger, a visiting scholar in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the School of Arts & Sciences, rarely rely on sight.

“Sound from a fin whale can be heard from 100 kilometers (62 miles) away underwater with a single hydrophone,” Spiesberger says. “Because those calls travel so far, we can use them to pinpoint where an animal is by comparing when its sound reaches receivers spread across the seafloor.”

But there’s a catch: If they were trying to track a nearby whale using just standard physics, they’d probably place the animal in the wrong spot—off by hundreds of meters.

In a paper recently published in the journal Physical Review E, Spiesberger and colleague Eugene Terray of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offer a potential explanation for why this occurs: The humble whale call is, improbably, tangled up with the same speed limits Einstein deduced from the universe. Their findings could improve whale tracking for conservationists.

“Most of us don’t hear a whale call and think, ‘Wow, look at the special theory of relativity in action,'” says Spiesberger. “I would have never guessed any connection existed.”

(7) YESTERDAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 22, 1920 — Ray Bradbury. (Died 2012.)

By Paul Weimer: One of the first two SF authors I read, and thus directly responsible for my love of science fiction. Sure, I talk about Tolkien, and The Amber Chronicles a lot in getting me into fantasy. And I mention Vance a lot, and Zelazny, and others. But the first two SF books I read were Asimov’s I, Robot…and a copy of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It was an early 80’s paperback cover with a still from the TV series/miniseries that came out in 1980.¹ I didn’t get to watch the series, and would not for a couple of decades. But I had the book, and read it cover to cover, multiple times, until I wore the book out. I was 10 at the time and my perception of the size of the science fiction oeuvre was limited.

Finding out my brother had a science fiction paperback collection, and more could be found in the library, bolstered by my reading of Bradbury. After that, I was unstoppable.

Beyond The Martian Chronicles, I didn’t actually read a lot of more Bradbury for a minute. I had taken the deep dive into science fiction and it was an endless smorgasbord of books and authors to sample. I finally came back to Bradbury for Fahrenheit 451, since a teacher in High School who loved classic science fiction (he clued me into authors like A. E. van Vogt) practically pushed the book into my hands. From there, I fell hard for The Halloween Tree and its whirlwind Halloween night, and the noble sacrifice that Pipkin’s friends make to bring him back. I read a swath of his short stories, and was moved by stories like the “The Veldt” (which still creeps me out) and of course “A Sound of Thunder” (has a time traveler stepped on a butterfly in the Cretaceous and that’s why the world is what it is now? Impossible to prove or disprove).

I got the sense in reading Bradbury that he was of a different water than a lot of his contemporaries. He was much more in the literary side of things when it came to his science fiction and fantasy, which made him more “respectable” and discussable when I got to college and College English classes. I could bring up Bradbury, but not Vance or Heinlein. That has changed now, in the last three decades, of course, but back then, Bradbury was “the respectable one”.

I am going to come back to The Martian Chronicles because I started there and am going to end there even given his large oeuvre. I only found out many years after reading that paperback to death that there have been many versions and multiple incarnations of The Martian Chronicles as a collection. I read a version of the collection about a decade ago that had many more stories than the slim volume that I had read way back in 1981. And I fell for the stories, old (and new to me) all over again.

And the ending to “Million-Year Picnic” haunts me still, as it did over 40 years ago.

Bradbury passed away in 2012, at the ripe old age of 91. Requiescat in pace, indeed.

¹ Off topic, I recently saw a copy of The Martian Chronicles with an AI generated cover image and it made me nauseous.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Mother Goose and Grimm introduces a regional version of a kids classic.
Off the Mark maps a recovery facility.
Pardon My Planet has a shortage of inventory.
Rubes is on the right track.
Thatababy shows off his rude machine.

(9) ANIME IN TIMES TO COME. “Netflix Drops Trailers, Images for 7 Shows Including ‘Blue Eye Samurai,’ ‘The One Piece’” – Animation World Network profiles all seven. Here’s what they said about the first three.

Bass X Machina

Netflix debuted the official teaser for Bass X Machina, the adult animated series executive produced by and starring Brian Tyree Henry. In the series, a lawless steampunk West is overrun by brutal outlaws, machines and supernatural terrors, and a father becomes judge, jury and executioner, knowing that every act of justice meant to protect his family may cost him the people he is fighting to save.

Blue Eye Samurai Season 2

We’re still waiting… mostly patiently, for this show to return! Season 2 of Blue Eye Samurai lands in January 2027, and Netflix has confirmed that a third and final season is in production for 2028.

In Season 2, Mizu’s bloody quest carries her to London, where she runs into new friends, old foes and her own demons. Back in Japan, Akemi and Taigen navigate Edo Castle under a dangerous new Shogun, and Ringo searches for a new purpose.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2

The gritty Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 got a teaser and release date. Netflix set the debut for fall 2026 when the first teaser dropped in July; it now streams October 20.

The new season runs 10 episodes as a standalone story set in Night City, the megacity of CD Projekt Red’s video game Cyberpunk 2077, rather than a continuation of the first season’s story. Bartosz Sztybor showruns and Studio TRIGGER animates again. Netflix’s said it best, noting the season as “a raw chronicle of redemption and revenge.” The first season premiered in September 2022 and won Anime of the Year at the 2023 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

(10) ON THE F&SF COVER. Cat Rambo told Facebook readers, “I wrote this story in 2022, in the midst of a whole lot of feels, and I’m very happy to see it appear.”

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “If Star Wars had a $10 Budget” – it’s not THAT funny, but you’re also free to stop watching at any time!

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

Pixel Scroll 8/22/26 In Narnia, Wardrobe Malfunctions May Be A Big Problem

Posted on August 22, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(0) Power came back on a few hours after I posed yesterday’s Scroll from my phone. Horrifyingly, when I came home from where I’d taken refuge it was still in the mid-80s outside. (“I’m melting — melting!!”)

(1) CATCHING UP WITH GRAHAM ANDREWS. “Orange Mike” Lowrey tracked down Graham Andrews, a fan and sf author whose 1977 appearance on Mastermind was recently rebroadcast as reported here (see “When Graham Andrews Competed on Mastermind”). Andrews shared about the writing he’s doing these days.

Thanks for sending me the link to File 770, which deals with my long-ago appearance on Mastermind – 1977! Quick update. My next short story collection might well be entitled Graham Andrews is Alive and Well and Living in Brussels. My good wife, Agnes, and I have lived here since 1981.

I have a new collection forthcoming, in fact, but I don’t yet know the publication date. Further career stuff is in the online SFE and a rather skimpy Summary Bibliography. My most recent book was American Rivals of James Bond (2023), and I have a few other projects on the go.

I keep my journalistic credentials up by writing articles on poplit for magazines like Paperback Parade and Infinity. Luckily for me, Brussels is still well-endowed with excellent second hand bookshops! I look forward to meeting you for an intellectual booze-up sometime soon.

All the Very Best for Now, Graham.

His Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry is here: SFE: Andrews, Graham.

(2) PARDON MY FRENCH. “‘Attacked’ by Trump on Trade, Canada Is ‘at War’ With U.S., Carney Says”. The New York Times has details. (Behind a paywall.) Among reasons negotiations foundered, “American negotiators pushed to roll back Canada’s efforts to promote Canadian and French language content in online streaming”.

The morning after he pulled negotiators from trade talks in Washington and set off a new round of American tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney called the U.S. proposal “a bad deal” and said Canada was “at war” with the United States.

“We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed,” he said in an address to Canadians on Saturday. “We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.”

“We cannot accept what they offered and we will not give what they asked,” he added. “We were not prepared to compromise Canada’s sovereignty or undermine our key industries.”

In a muscular, 22-minute speech that let Canadians — and Americans — know exactly where he stands, Mr. Carney said that Canada was under attack by President Trump’s punishing tariffs.

“You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” Mr. Carney said.

But unlike his electrifying speech at Davos that spoke of a rupture in the world order, Mr. Carney explicitly named the United States as an aggressor and a threat to Canada and the global economy.

The latest U.S. tariffs, he said, “are designed to hurt and divide us. They are a miscalculation because Canadians will always take care of each other. We know we’re stronger together.”

On Friday night Mr. Carney blamed unspecified last-minute demands for the collapse of negotiations, saying that they were “unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal.” Minutes later, the United States went ahead with previous plans and introduced 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian exports.

Mr. Carney immediately promised that Canada will retaliate “dollar for dollar.”

On Saturday, he said that American negotiators “asked too much and offered too little.” Among other things, Mr. Carney said that American negotiators pushed to roll back Canada’s efforts to promote Canadian and French language content in online streaming services, subsidies for industries like publishing and film production and even mandatory labeling in French, an official language in Canada, as well as English on packaging.

“We were close to reaching a comprehensive agreement with the U.S., but they made changes, including threats on French language and culture and Canadian culture that would never be acceptable for that reason,” Mr. Carney said in French. “That marked the end of that stage of negotiations.”…

(3) JUST FLOCK OFF. “Man in Darth Vader costume jokingly supports Flock funding at San Diego City Council meeting” reports Fox5 San Diego.

A man dressed as Star Wars villain Darth Vader spoke during public comment at a San Diego City Council committee meeting on Wednesday to show tongue-in-cheek support of a stronger police force and the use of Flock cameras.

The man, addressed by council staff as Darth Vader, wore a complete costume and even had the villain’s renowned heavy breathing when he spoke about police and surveillance matters while including references to characters in the Star Wars universe.

“The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium…” the man said, as other public commenters appeared to struggle to contain their laughter.

“We all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers…they are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this,” he continued. “I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend.”…

(4) STORAGE CONTAINER RAIDER. BBC says there’s a “Fundraiser to bring 9ft Lara Croft statue to Derby”.

A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to bring a statue of Lara Croft to Derby, where the Tomb Raider franchise was created 30 years ago.

The sculpture was originally part of the Tomb Raider: The LIVE Experience in Camden, London, but has been in storage since the attraction closed in 2023.

Organisers hope to raise £30,000 to move the statue to Derby Market Hall and create a permanent landmark celebrating the city’s role in video game folklore.

Luke Earle, who hosts the annual Tomb Raider Day in Derby, said: “Just as Nottingham has Robin Hood, Derby has Lara Croft, and it would be great to have a statue of her in the city centre to remind everyone that she was born here in the city.”

(5) I’M FEELING BETTAH. [Item by Steven French.] Ben Child speculates about a Robert Downey Jr return in the latest “Week in Geek”: “David Harbour has blown Tony Stark’s cover in Avengers: Doomsday. It might just be what Marvel needs” according to the Guardian.

Nobody knows exactly what solemn blood oaths Marvel uses to prevent spoilers. But we do know that Andrew Garfield spent most of the run-up to 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home – in which he would eventually turn up as one of two secret Spideys – behaving as if Kevin Feige was standing behind him, holding up a giant card saying: YOU HAVE NEVER MET TOBEY MAGUIRE. So we can imagine it’s pretty full on. Why, then, has Avengers: Doomsday star David Harbour this week apparently blurted out the biggest Marvel secret since Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3?

Invited by Variety magazine to offer up a line from Doomsday “completely out of context”, Harbour thought for a moment, adopted the Russian accent of his Red Guardian character and came out with: “You … are Tony Stark.” Which is quite a thing to say about a film whose entire marketing campaign so far has depended on us accepting that Iron Man remains dead, and that the actor who used to play him, Robert Downey Jr, is playing Victor von Doom instead….

(6) HELP REPLACE CLEMENS’ WHEELS. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] The Beast Within star, actor Paul Day Clemens, a genuinely wonderful soul, friend and brother needs our help!

Paul Day Clemens is one of the kindest, most generous people you’ll ever meet. Paul is always helping others, regardless of his own struggles — but now, he needs our support.

Just 4 years after his car was totaled in a terrible accident, the engine on his replacement car failed. He needs our help to get another car, so he can return to work.

He also needs assistance with paying for necessary dental care that insurance doesn’t fully cover.

If you are able, please consider supporting this worthy fundraiser.

“Fundraiser for Paul Clemens by Karin Willison : Help Paul Drive More Miles with Smiles” at GoFundMe.

(7) A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON. [Item by N.] Online historian Sean Munger has released part one of his two-part video essay, in which he outlines the history of Star Trek: The Original Series alongside the history of the Vietnam War it coincided with, and all the interesting ways in which they overlapped: “Star Trek and the Vietnam War (Part I)”.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

August 22, 1920 – Ray Bradbury. (Died 2012.)

John King Tarpinian paid his respects to Ray Bradbury on Ray’s birthday, as John does every year.

John brought a little cake and a typewriter as gifts. He says, “When done I give the cake to the Admin staff.”

John proudly adds, “Note that I am wearing Ray’s dress watch.”

(9) YESTERDAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 21, 1911 — Anthony Boucher. (Died 1968.)

By Paul Weimer: An award-winning science fiction publisher, editor and writer with a couple of Hugos to his credit, the somewhat obscure reputation of Boucher today in science fiction circles is on, perhaps a single book that isn’t even a science fiction book at all! Yes, friends, I am going to discuss Rocket to the Morgue.

Readers of my work know that I am not a huge mystery person, I just haven’t read a ton of them in my time. I don’t read a lot of crime fiction. Anthony Boucher was an expert and deft at it. Not only writing it, but he reviewed crime and mystery fiction for years. It’s plausible his reputation in that sphere exceeds his one in science fiction, even given his two Hugo awards (for Best Professional Magazine for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), given the fact that there is a whole mystery/crime convention named for him. I think, seeing a mention of that con in an issue of Locus isthe first time that the name Boucher came to my attention. “Boucher who?” led me down a rabbit hole to find Rocket to the Morgue thanks to an interlibrary loan.

So why did I go to lengths to find and read Rocket to the Morgue in the 1990s, you might ask? Well, you probably know by now that I can’t resist a good Tuckerization, and Rocket to the Morgue is a mystery novel that not only involves murder of the heir to a science fiction literary estate (a locked door mystery no less) but the book is replete with a number of characters that are thinly disguised science fiction authors. In fact, I think there are two expys of Heinlein running around this book, in addition to L. Ron Hubbard, John W. Campbell, Jr., and a bunch of others I didn’t recognize, then or since.

I also know that as under a version of his “real name” Boucher himself appears in this book, which is most delightedly meta. But mysteries are not usually my thing, although I’ve been getting more into them lately. Perhaps I should give the book a re-read sometime and see if it holds up. (Not too long ago, I read a straight up mystery by H. Beam Piper, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.)

His story “The Compleat Werewolf” was up for a Retro-Hugo some years ago, but did not win. In addition, the other fact I know about Boucher is that he was very good friends with Philip K. Dick. Come to think, The Compleat Werewolf does read a bit like an early PKD story, full of ideas almost to its own detriment. How influential was, in fact, Boucher, on Dick’s writing is something I do not actually know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is all about me.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal depicts a typical internet argument.
Brevity follows a trail.
Brewster Rockit lowers the level.
Carpe Diem faces another disappointment.
F Minus has to hurry.
Rubes makes a pitch.
Zack Hill tests out a slang app.

(11) FREE READ. From Elizabeth Bear.

I have a new story out today at Technology Review, and they gave me a gift link to share! www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/12/1…It's about thoughtcriminal archivists, word-fame, and how to get through a dark age without losing your soul. Much.
— Elizabeth Bear (@matociquala.bsky.social) 2026-06-12T16:39:46.993Z

(12) CORFLU MEMOIR. Editors Geri Sullivan and Pat Virzi have released The Spirit of Corflu A History of Corflu by Corfluvians, 1984 – 2026, a 474-page paperback of reminiscences about the fanzine fans’ convention. (Primarily available at Amazon.)

The Spirit of Corflu is a history and celebration of Corflu, an annual international convention for science fiction fanzine fans. Edited by Geri Sullivan and Pat Virzi, this colorful, comprehensive history features articles, photos, guest of honor speeches, convention reports, art, and more focusing on each of the 43 Corflu conventions held 1984–2026. It also includes the various awards, honors, and Corflu silliness like human pyramids, softball games, and other traditions. New material from 37 contributors plus reprinted and quoted material from over 100 Corfluvians.

(13) CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE FILM PROJECT KICKSTARTER UPDATE. “The CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE film project by Francis Hamit” Kickstarter seeks to raise $15,000.

Francis passed along this encouraging development: “Welcome AFIO Supporters”.

A link to this page appeared today in the Weekly Intelligence Notes (WINS) published by AFIO (Association of Former Intelligence Officers). This group includes veterans of the CIA and the other 18 US intelligence agencies. It’s a very diverse group that appreciates a good spy story. I’m hoping for a rush of pledges to get this appeal working properly. I think they will really want to see this film. I’ve been a member of AFIO since 1987.

(14) WHAT’S THAT SMELL? …The stench of cancel culture may be dissipating at last. Indeed, Pepé Le Pew has been un-cancelled and appears in the new Looney Tunes live-action comedy, Coyote vs Acme.

Back in 2021, the lovestruck Looney Tunes skunk became a target of peak, post-Me Too wokery when he was scrapped from Space Jam: A New Legacy. A Casablanca-like scene was set to feature Pepé Le Pew attempting to woo actress Greice Santo, who would spurn his advances by slapping him and dumping a glass of water on him. The scene was cut.

It followed a series of humourless tweets from New York Times columnist Charles M Blow arguing that Pepé Le Pew “added to rape culture” (the tweets apparently had nothing to do with the scene being cut but sparked a larger discourse around the character and consent).

No doubt you know Pepé Le Pew’s schtick from the old Looney Tunes cartoons. A Frenchman, naturally, he mistakes Penelope Pussycat for a lady skunk (usually because she’s had a white stripe erroneously painted down her back) and pursues her relentlessly. He refuses to take no for an answer, and gets very handsy as she struggles to get away from his affections.

Created by the revered animator Chuck Jones in 1945, Pepé Le Pew is a sex pest by 21st-century, real-world standards. But now he’s been given the chance to atone for his sins in Coyote vs Acme, which amusingly has been saved from cancellation itself (after Warner Bros previously decided to not even bother releasing it). Pepé is featured in a pepper-spray gag – singled out by critics as a hilarious highlight. Hopefully he’s now given a chance to grow and move on from the toxic behaviour that’s stunk up his reputation since winning the Best Animated Short Film Oscar with For Scent-imental Reasons (1949)….

… Indeed, the [Looney Tunes] cartoon series, integral to the golden era of American animation, has been keeping the censors busy for years thanks to its long history of outdated gag, racial stereotypes and wanton violence….

…Other popular members of the Looney Tunes roster have been cancelled. The seemingly inoffensive Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in all of Mexico (“Arriba, arriba!”) was dropped by the Cartoon Network in 1999 due to concerns of ethnic stereotypes. However, Hispanic-Americans lobbied in support of the character, and he was reinstated. The League of United Latin American Citizens dubbed Speedy a “cultural icon”. Unlike Pepé Le Pew, it seems there was no need for Speedy to atone….

(15) MIGHTY JOE YOUNG ON THE MARKET.

(16) WILDWOOD TRAILER (AKA LATE TRAILER PARK). [Item by N.] Wildwood comes to theaters on October 23.

From the makers of Coraline, Wildwood is a sweeping, darkly magical adventure about Prue, a young girl who journeys into a hidden forest to rescue her younger brother. Along the way she encounters warring factions, extraordinary creatures, and a world unlike anything she’s ever known.

Along with that, here’s a featurette for the upcoming film, in which Laika outlines its painstaking, AI-free process:

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

Pixel Scroll 8/20/26 Stuck In The Pixels With You

Posted on August 20, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) GENRE LEADS AT TELEVISION CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS. “’Widow’s Bay,’ ‘Heated Rivalry,’ ‘The Pitt’ Win at TCA Awards” reports Variety.

… “Widow’s Bay” had the most wins of the night with three. The Apple TV horror-comedy won for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, Outstanding New Program and Individual Achievement in Comedy for Kate O’Flynn.

(2) FUTURES WITHOUT OSHA. “From gorgeous futuristic cities with a complete lack of transit safety to some truly bizarre fantasy armor, James Davis Nicoll highlights five examples of classic SFF cover art that raise a number of urgent health and safety questions.” “Five Classic SFF Covers Featuring Potential Health and Safety Issues” at Reactor.

Nicoll’s first example:

Giancola’s cover is beautiful… but my attention was drawn to the jumpers at the upper right of the image. Or rather, the dire lack of window glass and railings that should have kept them from doing that. As well, the slope of the wall immediately below the window (?) through which they are jumping, combined with the frankly appalling deep chasm next to the rails onto which they are jumping, in concert with the comprehensive lack of any safety mechanism to keep people from falling into the chasm, seems likely to send them to their doom.

More importantly, someone is going to have to do a lot of paperwork in that cover’s immediate future. Even if the leapers do land on the tracks, they could well break a leg. As a habitual transit user, I can assure you nothing delays a train quite like an injured person on the tracks.³

(3) UKRANIAN PUBLISHERS ASK DONATIONS. The Guardian reports that “Ukrainian publishers call for support after Russian attacks destroy 10m books”.

The Ukrainian Book Institute has called on the international publishing community to support Ukrainian publishers after Russian attacks in July and early August destroyed about 10m books and a significant share of the country’s book production capacity.

The institute said the attacks on publishing, printing and warehouse infrastructure had left some companies at risk of financial collapse. A major attack on 1 August hit warehouses belonging to the RNK-Ranok publishing group in Kharkiv, destroying approximately 8m books, following July attacks in Kyiv which led to the loss of more than 1.5m books. In all, the recent attacks have led to the destruction of approximately 30% of the volume of books produced annually in Ukraine.

The RNK-Ranok logistics centre, which stores books for the company’s many imprints, is also the distribution centre for the national bookselling chain KnyhoLand, which runs 51 shops and several websites.

Along with the estimated 8m books lost, a further 600,000 school textbooks were destroyed. The total loss has been preliminarily estimated at almost 1bn hryvnias (£16.5m).

“At this stage, we face the risk of the collapse of the entire book ecosystem,” said Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute.

The institute is asking for donations to support Ukrainian publishers, and is calling on the international publishing community to work with Ukrainian publishers and raise awareness about Russian attacks on Ukrainian culture.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and now occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory….

(4) ON STAGE AT LACON V. Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble is presenting a staged reading of Policarpa: Apocalypse Sur Amerikkka — a magical-realist speculative drama by Colombian-American playwright Diana Burbano — on Thursday, August 27 at 3:00 PM in Pacific Ballroom D, Hilton Anaheim. It reimagines 19th-century independence heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta in a near-future plague narrative rooted in Latin American magical realism. Full cast and director attached in the release below.

There’s an interview with the playwright here: “The Subtext: Diana Burbano Writes What Scares Her”.

In the near future, a plague infests La Gran Colombia. Ingrid Bolívar is the only one who knows the plague is carried by the young women of the streets she has claimed as her army, and Policarpa is meant to be her greatest weapon. But when Policarpa falls in love with a top government official, she turns from a weapon into a savior. Rooted in Latin American magical realism, Policarpa imagines a Colombia just around the corner.

“It’s so exciting to be presenting a Latinx Futurism piece,” said Burbano. “Policarpa leans into both speculative fiction and magical realism, and Worldcon is the perfect home for such a blend.”

(5) REPRISING A STAR TREK CLASSIC. “Being accused of overacting by William Shatner is more than the Gorn can stand.”

Being accused of overacting by William Shatner is more than the Gorn can stand. #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/hBAOag0iBP
— Marshall Julius (@MarshallJulius) August 19, 2026

(6) CERAMIC SIBLINGS. A Deep Look by Dave Hook reacts to “’The Porcelain Sisters’, Daryl Gregory, October 2026 Tachyon”. Here’s his short take. The long analysis is at the link.

The Short: I loved the horror/comedy novel The Porcelain Sisters, by Daryl Gregory, October 2026 Tachyon. It involves twin sisters, one “real” and one porcelain. Isabel is the porcelain one. Ruth loves Isabel fiercely, but she also struggles with having a porcelain sister. Life gets very complex for both of them after Isabel drives off a young man who Ruth is hoping to have sex with. Isabel is broken in Ruth’s rage, and witches enter their lives. It’s not a long novel, and it moves along at breakneck speed. Daryl Gregory keeps hitting it out of the park for me with his fiction. Strongly recommended. Don’t miss the Afterword.

(7) INSIDE THE STARSHIP. Adam Savage’s Tested asks “Does Star Trek’s USS Enterprise Design Make Sense?”

We welcome to the cave designer and illustrator Matt Cushman, the artist behind some of our favorite science fiction cutaway illustrations from Star Trek and Star Wars. Matt shares with Adam his new massive cross-section poster of the original USS Enterprise, sized as large as the original 11-foot filming model. We scrutinize the details of this incredible piece and learn all the ways Matt made sense of the interior layout based on what was shown in the original series episodes!

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 20, 1961 — Greg Egan, 65.

By Paul Weimer: I first came across Greg Egan’s work browsing in a bookstore (remember those halcyon days, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth?). It was the late 90’s and I was in a mood to leaven by my award heavy reading (my project to read Hugo and Nebula winners in full motion). So I came across a trade paperback of Axiomatic and its tagline “Science fiction for people who like science fiction” attracted me. I also noted “Author of Distress, Permutation City and Quarantine.”

So Axiomatic came home with me. I was hit right between the eyes by his science fiction, which is definitely not entry level science fiction. Egan likes his maths, particularly, and his stories are uncompromising and sometimes require a bit of work to read. So I found Axiomatic, and so I slowly added him to my diet–it was clear to me that he would not be an author I’d want to mainline.

Permutation City was intriguing with its virtual world and its inhabitants. Distress and its idea that a theory of everything could, in effect, be the origin of the universe. “Wang’s Carpets” and the ideas that a simple organism mat could be more complex than the most complicated computer and create a virtual world thereby.

And on and on. His work hasn’t lost a step but if anything, has gotten even more complicated and more scientific theory experiment heavy. The Clockwork Rocket novels have weird laws of physics in the universe. Dichronauts has even weirder physics than The Clockwork Rocket does and I am still not sure I quite understand what he is doing in it. Morphotrophic, one of his most recent novels, decides to play with the rules of biology in a way that is a little reminiscent of Adrian Tchiakovsky.

But what separates Egan even more is that he loves to try and communicate the science behind this all. He has a website with essays, apps and more to try and explain the very unusual concepts in his books. You can even play Quantum Soccer from his story “Border Guards”.

To be frank, I don’t read Egan for his characters or plot. I read it for his amazing science fiction worldbuilding. His work is not for every reader of science fiction, but for those who it is for, Greg Egan’s work is extremely for them. I’d try one of the older and less baroquely strange works like Permutation City, if you want to jump into the pool. Egan was an early adopter of ebooks and his back catalog is all readily available.

Greg Egan’s first novel, An Unusual Angle (1983)

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal goes through some convolutions.
xkcd has a common name for meteor watching.
BC takes a side trip.
Lio creates a date.
Strange Brew tells a horror story.
The Argyle Sweater adds another member.

(10) GLEN COOK TO FINISH GARRETT SERIES. Arc Manor recently acquired paper, eBook, and audio rights to the fifteenth and final novel, Last Metal Romance, in Glen Cook’s iconic Garrett, P.I. series.

The publisher also obtained audio rights to all fourteen previous novels, which have never appeared in English-language audio. The two agreements, negotiated via Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, not only give the series its ending, but also, finally, a voice that fans have waited decades for. Publication dates will be announced separately.

The detective made his first appearance in 1987 in Sweet Silver Blues and never looked back. The series follows a hard-boiled private investigator through TunFaire, a fantasy city rich with all sorts of fantastical elements, and of course, mysteries for Garrett to solve.

Garrett is a freelance investigator in this city where clients and suspects come in every species, and the money is never clean. He works alongside the Dead Man, his long-deceased telepathic partner, in books that set hard-boiled mystery inside a fantasy world.

Much like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in his final case, Curtain, Last Metal Romance is a farewell to an iconic detective (after nearly forty years) that sees him older and more subdued. He is married, and almost “respectable,” and is leading a comfortable life as a wise confidential informer of the Crown Prince himself.

But when the Prince asks him to keep an eye on a woman under the name Morose Spirit, things start falling apart, not least Garrett himself, as someone starts taking him apart, memory, body, luck… one curse at a time.

Despite his previous comments, Cook has confirmed to the publisher that this will be the last novel, hence the title (Last Metal Romance).

Like all books in the series, this one can be read as a stand-alone adventure.

“Garrett’s readers have waited thirteen years for this case, and listeners have waited thirty-nine,” said Shahid Mahmud, publisher of Arc Manor. “These agreements take care of both issues: the final novel in every format, and the complete series in English-language audio for the first time.”

Readers who have followed this detective for decades get a chance to say their final farewell, and audio fans finally get to listen to this iconic series.

(11) HOPE ABANDONED. AP News tells readers,“Mission to save NASA’s Swift space telescope is called off”.

The mission to save NASA’s sinking Swift Observatory was called off Wednesday, dooming the telescope to a fiery reentry later this year.

NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced the news more than a month after the startup’s Link spacecraft rocketed away to the telescope’s rescue.

Katalyst said Link will not attempt to capture Swift and boost it to a higher orbit because of problems with controlling the spacecraft. NASA said this means the telescope will plunge through the atmosphere after more than 20 years of tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe like gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. Its demise is not expected before October.

NASA paid $30 million to Katalyst in an attempt to raise the telescope to a safer, longer-lasting orbit. Intense solar activity caused it to lose altitude faster than expected. The rescue spacecraft went into an uncontrollable spin a few weeks after its liftoff in early July. While flight controllers managed to slow Link’s tumble, issues continued to plague its pointing and positioning in orbit.

(12) TRAILER PARK. “’Golden Axe’ Trailer: Matthew Rhys Stars in Sega Animated Series” – Variety introduces the trailer:

Paramount+ has unveiled the trailer for “Golden Axe,” a new adult animated comedy series based on Sega’s classic 1989 beat-em-up video game.

According to the official logline, “Golden Axe” follows “warriors Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead as they reunite to save Yuria from the evil giant Death Adder, who just won’t seem to stay dead. Their quest is complicated by Hampton Squib, an inexperienced and wildly underprepared adventurer whose dream of heroism far exceeds his abilities. Forced to work together despite their flaws, they must find a way to stop Death Adder once and for all.”

(13) HUMMERS. Harrison Ford and Cookie Monster humming the Indiana Jones theme together.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Andrew (not Werdna), SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, 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 Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 8/19/26 It’s An Illiad Wind That Blows No Good

Posted on August 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) READERLESS DIGESTION. Brian Keene’s blog for “8/18/26” ends with a provocative question:

…You probably remember how the generative AI companies — to get around pesky authors complaining that their copyrighted works have been used without their consent or financial renumeration to train the LLMs — have begun buying massive quantities of rare and out-of-print books, stripping the spine to make them easily scannable, and feeding those into the LLMs instead.

Well, some journalists placed a tracker on a shipment of rare books that they suspected had been purchased for such a thing. The shipment ended up in Las Vegas at Amazon’s VGT3 facility — where Amazon is training their own AI.

If Amazon — a company that got its start selling and shipping books — is now buying massive quantities of rare books to feed to their machine god, what then are they doing with the books any indie author or small press uploads to their KDP division…?

(2) IMPERFECT PERFECTION. Carline Tromp leads readers into “Adventures in Utopia” in The Dial.

…In the early days, utopias were generally located on our own planet, in places as yet undiscovered, or which were so far away that anything was possible. In his essay The Island at the End of the World: New Zealand and Other Utopias (2026), Eirik Høyer Leivestad explores how New Zealand long served a similar function. The Europeans who “found” the island projected numerous fantasies onto it, from the myth of the noble savage to the idea that it could become a socialist paradise.

As more and more of the planet was mapped, these other worlds were relocated either underground or to outer space, as Margaret Atwood notes in In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2012). As a result, the notion of utopia became increasingly associated with the sci-fi genre, while the idea of creating a perfect social order here on earth was corrupted by totalitarian regimes. This may be another reason why dystopias are more common in contemporary literature than utopias: We are wary of societies utterly without discord — we suspect repression, surveillance, dungeons.

There is something totalitarian about utopias, something already latent in More. They are uncompromising and absolute, and they demand sacrifice. Even Ursula Le Guin’s Anarres, which is haunted by the shadow of unfreedom. Le Guin was an anarchist, but she wasn’t naïve, and she understood that no form of governance would be able to fully eradicate the human tendency to abuse power. The anticapitalist utopia in The Dispossessed is imperfect, but the book is mind-expanding, opening up new ways to think about what’s possible….

(3) WESTFAHL MEDICAL UPDATE. [Item by Gary Westfahl.]

On the morning of August 17, I experienced a terrible fall, resulting in a huge gash on my forehead that makes me look a bit like Frankenstein; I also had some small neck fractures, but no surgery was required, as they are expected to heal by themselves. I was able to return home on August 18, but I will have to wear a neck brace for 6 to 8 weeks, which will obviously affect my productivity and communications with colleagues.

It has been observed that the true key to longevity is avoiding falling, and for the last three years I have been walking with extreme care so that I wouldn’t fall. On August 17, my luck ran out.

(4) GRASPING REALITY. Kameron Hurley contemplates “Why A Copy is Insufficient”.

…As someone whose day job career has been masticated and spat out by the LLM machine, this was on my mind when I picked up Molly Tanzer’s And Side by Side They Wander, about a ragtag group of misfits trying to pull off a heist to get humanity’s original art back from the aliens that took it in exchange for giving us all world peace and prosperity.

That’s right: an end to all sickness and horror, and all you have to do is give up your art.

Oh, the aliens said, you can still have COPIES of it. We’ll make you wonderful copies, all the copies you could want! You’ll never be able to tell the difference! But the real works of art, including the monuments, the architecture made by real human hands, we’re taking all of the originals. That’s the bargain you’re making.

It sounds like a wonderful deal, doesn’t it?

Every work day, I’m asked to negotiate output with a program that has illegally sucked up all the output of the world’s greatest artists and thinkers (and the least great, too, and mostly, the average), including my own, and reassemble it according to what ends up being the averages. I am told that someday this spicy autocorrect will transform the world, though what exactly it’s transforming it into is as yet unclear. Month by month, the output gets more and more sophisticated. It can render short videos. It can design powerpoints according to programmed specifications. It can wring out an ad that sounds exactly like an ad. It can hoover up all the data from your various software programs and offer advice on what it all means. About 20% of the time, what comes out is still garbled, incorrect; the more input it has, the more it makes things up. But it has given CEOs everything they ever wanted, and that is a “worker” who does exactly what they ask, and never talks back, and praises them for every one of their ideas.

It’s unsuprising, then, that with the arrival of that technology came the bloodbath in human creator jobs. Many of them bullshit jobs, don’t get me wrong. Designers complain endlessly about spending 12 hours every day, day in and day out, making powerpoints. Writing SEO-optimized articles is excrutiating. I have spent literally months of my life writing and designing websites that never actually launched, or that got shut down a year later. All gone, tears in the rain.

The internet was already filling up with trash made to be consumed by Google and its ilk, not actual humans.

The pace of that output has accelerated 10,000%….

(5) MESSAGE IN DISGUISE. Dave Freer’s “Prometheus YA Special Award Acceptance Speech” has been posted at Mad Genius Club.

… You see: STORM-DRAGON was a book designed for a specific purpose, with a particular end in mind. It was that quite despicable thing, which, honestly has damaged reading in general, and YA/middle grade in particular. I confess: STORM-DRAGON IS ‘Message-fiction’.

Yes: Message fiction – which, I suspect, handled as it often is with the dexterity of a steam-shovel for micro-surgery, has put more people, particularly young boys, off reading than anything else.

So: knowing that full-well, and regarding the message-dripping offerings of much of modern children’s and young adult publishing like Hakarl… Ah. A digression: I must explain Hakarl, to those of you lucky enough not know it. Hakarl is an Icelandic dish made from basking sharks, which are toxic, because of the level of vitamin A. Traditionally it was caught in autumn, buried under the beach shingle for winter, dug up, cut into rubbery jelly blocks that tastes like it smells, which is a delectable combination fermented fish and ammonia-floor cleaner. It’s not poisonous any more, I just wished it was when I had to eat it politely. I believe you can get used to it, especially with enough Brennvin. But it’s probably not the ideal choice for an introduction to food… So: what talked me into fiction that’s first purpose was to promote a message? I’m well known for saying that messages have to be so disguised that readers get them without even being aware of it, that if it detracts from the book, it is the message that must go.

It was what that message was. It’s a message I believe passionately in, that I believe I have promoted all my life, that I believe is of vital importance to our species. Yeah, like most jokers, when you peel the layers back, I’m a very serious guy. This is something that is of fundamental importance. This is Prometheus’s gift of fire.

The message is: READING IS FUN. READING FICTION ESPECIALLY IS AWESOME….

(6) PODCAST PREVIEWS LACON V. The Incomplete Worldcon Podcast’s fifth episode is a “News Break”. Sarah Gulde, Isabel Shechter and DJ Switch will soon be on their way: “We’re less than two weeks away and packing has BEGUN! We’ve got tips for what to bring, how to manage your schedule, and where you can find us at LACon V NEXT WEEK!”

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 19, 1921 — Gene Roddenberry. (Died 1991.)

By Paul Weimer: Yes, the Great Bird of the Galaxy (a nickname given to him by given to him by Associate Producer Robert H. Justman.).

We can start with Star Trek of course, since TOS is where I started to engage with his work, but he was far more than only Star Trek, but Star Trek would be a legacy enough (the original series, the movies, the Next Generation, the animated series (which I came late to), and on and on. An optimistic view of the future that wasn’t always adhered to, and eventually was discarded to a degree (looking at you, Section 31) but then was somewhat reconstituted in the most recent shows, such as Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and the 31st century seasons of Discovery. The idea that we can come together, solve our problems, fix our shit, and go and explore the universe is a powerful story, a powerful myth, and Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek brought that to light and to the public.

Roddenberry, of course was beyond Star Trek. Somewhere along the line I came across his Genesis II and Planet Earth… although I managed to see Planet Earth first. I was frustrated a bit that I had missed Alex Hunt’s origin story of how he got frozen and then revived by a new civilization building on the ruins of the old. I really did like both series and the implications of a rewilded Earth where discoveries of old and new could happen with the help of the worldwide subway network. But neither pilot took off and the series idea died, there. It’s a pity, one can see seeds of a number of lighter post-apocalyptic RPGs in the wreckage of the failed Genesis II/Planet Earth project, and maybe had it taken off, we’d take the problems confronting humanity a lot more seriously.

I did watch some of Andromeda, which explored the idea in a different way, having a different Dylan Hunt as a man out of time trying to bring peace and order to the galaxy. Roddenberry didn’t live to see Andromeda come to fruition and I wonder what he might have thought of it. I thought it had some good ideas, even given the relatively unpleasantness of the actor who portrayed Hunt.

Earth: Final Conflict had some interesting ideas at first and I mentally filed it as a more benevolent form of the series V but I fell off the wagon a couple of seasons in, and have not gone to try and revisit it, since.

I think that maybe with the exception of Genesis and Planet Earth, none of the rest of his work had the potential to be the mythic creations that Star Trek became. Even aside from all of that, it is unmistakable that Roddenberry changed television and science fiction history through Star Trek and his other projects. What started as “Wagon Train to the stars” helped pave the way for a lot more space opera on the screen. Would Lucas have even conceived of doing Star Wars if not for Star Trek? There is definitely a big what-if, if Roddenberry had never managed to bring Star Trek to screen, had not promoted and encouraged SF on television with his other projects. Great Bird of the Galaxy indeed. That’s probably a much poorer timeline.

But I am glad we live in this timeline, when and where he did.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Off the Mark has a related disease.
Reality Check needs a standard bat.
Yaffle studies a problem.
xkcd points out how some names don’t sound real.

(9) WOULD BE CHEAP AT TWICE THE PRICE. Silicon Canals remembers – “In 1977, George Lucas agreed to a lower director’s fee on Star Wars in exchange for keeping the merchandising and sequel rights, a trade 20th Century Fox executives considered an easy win because nobody thought movie toys would sell — those rights are now estimated to be worth more than $20 billion”.

… What happened next arrived faster than anyone could manufacture for it. Star Wars opened in May 1977 and immediately overwhelmed every projection anyone had made about it, and the toy company holding the license, Kenner, found itself in the strange position of owning the rights to the year’s most in-demand toy with no actual toy to put on shelves in time for Christmas. Kenner had reportedly held off on tooling up a full production line because, like Fox, it hadn’t expected the demand to materialize.

Its solution became one of the more memorable footnotes in toy industry history. A Kenner executive, Bernard Loomis, devised what’s now remembered as the “Early Bird Certificate” — a $7.99 cardboard package containing artwork of the planned figures, a display diorama, some stickers, and, crucially, a mail-in certificate promising that four actual action figures would arrive in the mail sometime between February and June of 1978. Kenner capped the campaign at 500,000 of these effectively empty boxes, and parents lined up for them that Christmas anyway, betting on a mail-in promise because an actual figure didn’t exist yet to sell….

(10) LEAP GEAR. “Protestors Dressed as Gandalf Demand Peter Thiel Leave Argentina, Go Back to the Abyss” reports Gizmodo.

One does not simply walk into Argentina. Despite his significant influence over the Trump administration, tech billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel has been putting down roots in Javier Milei’s far-right, anarcho-capitalist Argentina, apparently worried that things might go sideways in the States. At least some Argentinians would prefer he go back home, and they decided to send him a message by protesting outside of Thiel’s residence while dressed as Gandalf the Grey.

According to Argentinian newspaper Clarín, the demonstration took place on Monday and featured a dozen or so people draped in long cloaks, wizard hats, and faux beards who made their way to Thiel’s neighborhood with signs bearing slogans like “You shall not pass, you son of a bitch.” Per Clarín, the group also jumped up and down while chanting, “Whoever doesn’t jump owns Palantir and won’t be able to live in Argentina.”

The group’s inclination that Thiel take a hike comes as the billionaire continues to dig his claws into Argentina. Per the New York Times, the scariest member of the PayPal mafia has already met with Milei and his ministers, who were apparently thrilled to have him. Milei described their meeting as “wonderful,” according to the Buenos Aires Times….

(11) DEEP BREATH. The New Yorker plumbs “The Mystery of Dark Oxygen”.

In March, I accompanied an international team of scientists on an expedition to one of the deepest places that humans have ever visited, a few hours outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Before sunrise, we drove to the entrance of the Moab Khotsong gold-and-uranium mine, joining a line of workers who were relieving the night shift. Security was tight; for years, mining companies have struggled to keep out illegal miners called zama-zamas, who sneak underground and collect ore at great danger to themselves. When guards finally cleared us and our gear, we walked through rotating gates into what resembled a suburban office park. At its center was a boxy concrete tower—a mine shaft that would carry us nearly two miles down into the earth.

The scientists had come not for precious metals but for something even more elusive: what they call dark oxygen. On Earth’s surface, plants and algae produce plentiful oxygen from sunlight and water, allowing us to live and breathe. At one time, scientists didn’t think that significant quantities of free oxygen, or O₂, would be found anywhere else on the planet, in part because O₂ reacts aggressively with other elements. “O₂ is way less abundant in the universe than diamond,” Emil Ruff, a microbial ecologist and the expedition lead for the trip, told me. But, over the past few years, small quantities of free oxygen have been detected in a range of deep places, far removed from the light of the sun. Ruff and his colleagues hoped to collect new samples of ancient water in the mine. They suspected that oxygen was playing an unrecognized role in powering underground life….

… If such a useful molecule was abundant underground, the researchers reasoned, then the deep biosphere might be even more diverse and widespread than expected. And whatever was generating dark oxygen might also be found on planets or moons beyond Earth. “We started digging,” Ruff told me. His team soon discovered trace amounts of oxygen in deep groundwater from around the world. They found DNA from aerobes—microbes capable of using oxygen—in places that sunlight could never reach. Other microbes seemed to produce their own dark oxygen, perhaps to extract energy from hydrocarbons such as methane, much as drag racers inject nitrous oxide into their engines to boost horsepower. Last year, Ruff and five other investigators won a multimillion-dollar grant from nasa to extend their investigations on a sort of dark-oxygen world tour. Moab Khotsong was their first and deepest stop….

(12) WEAR IT WELL, AMELIA EARHART. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Smithsonian exhibits “Amelia Earhart’s flight suit”.

Pilot Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) earned revenue by carrying philatelic materials on her flights. Earhart owned and wore this leather wool-lined flight suit manufactured by Arnold, Constable & Company, of Paris and New York. Such suits were essential for long-distance flights. Early airplanes offered scant protection from the elements, especially the icy cold at altitudes of 20,000 feet.

NPR has the suit’s backstory: “From cockpit to catwalk with aviation icon Amelia Earhart”.

Amelia Earhart was famous as an early aviatrix. Her flight suit is part of a bigger story about the history of American fashion and celebrity.

…ALISON BAZYLINSKI: She borrowed a man’s flight suit for that to stay warm. And actually, when she arrives over in the U.K., she has department stores calling her and messaging her, asking to dress her.

LOMBARDO: Alison Bazylinski, an assistant curator at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, says soon after that flight, the department store Arnold Constable made Earhart a brown leather jumpsuit lined with wool.

BAZYLINSKI: It has two large cargo pockets above the knees.

LOMBARDO: A big collar, asymmetrical buttons going up one side and a big belt. It was cool.

BAZYLINSKI: There’s a record of it from about two weeks later, saying that three people had purchased it for $175 per suit.

LOMBARDO: About $3,400 today.

BAZYLINSKI: This was a very deliberate marketing choice on their part, particularly at a time when the – the American fashion industry is really taking off during this time period, and it’s with sportswear.

LOMBARDO: Clothes that were stylish but not fussy. Women’s Wear Daily guessed that the other buyers were pilots, too, who needed something warm to wear in the sky. Things got icy when Earhart crossed the Atlantic alone a few years later. Here’s what she told the BBC….

In case you didn’t recognize the reference: “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight sung (here) by Jim Kweskin”

And here’s song writer/music info: A popular song from 1939. Words and music by Dave McEnery. Arranged by Lindsay McPhail. Sung by Laurence Rubenstein. Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne.

(13) TRAILER PARK. “DUNE 3 Official NEW Teaser Trailer (2026)”. In theaters December 18.

Paul Atreides, now Emperor Muad’Dib, must come to terms with his immense power while battling political enemies and a conspiracy in his entourage. As House Atreides faces collapse, the real danger looms for Paul’s lover Chani and her unborn heirs.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Christopher Hennessy, Daniel Dern, Paul Weimer, Gary Westfahl, Sarah Gulde, Andrew (not Werdna), SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/18/26 A Circle Of Ent Leaves Made Into A Gateway

Posted on August 18, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) MASS BOOK THEFT FOLLOW-UP. L.W. Currey Inc. has sent an additional alert to their customers about the major book theft they suffered. The original report estimated $250,000 worth of books have been stolen.

The suspect is a thin male, approximately 6’4″ dressed in black and wearing pointed-toe dress shoes approximately size 14.

The thief is interested in Arkham House books, vampire fiction, Hugo-Award winners, and high spots in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with a particular focus on Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Hope Hodgson, Robert Jordan, H. P. Lovecraft, David Lindsay, Lewis Padgett, Clark Ashton Smith, Bram Stoker, and H. G. Wells.

A complete list of the stolen books with pictures may be accessed here.

If you have any information potentially related to this theft, please contact Investigator Derek T. Brassard of the New York State Police at [email protected] and reference case # NY2601006675

(2) THEY WORE THE UNIFORM. “8 Famous Science-Fiction Writers and Actors Who Served” – Military.com discusses Roddenberry, Serling, Vonnegut, Ackerman, Nimoy, Asimov, Heinlein, and Ellison.

More than 20 years before Gene Roddenberry sent the USS Enterprise across the galaxy, he was trying to keep a B-17 from running off an island runway in the South Pacific.

On Aug. 2, 1943, Roddenberry was piloting Yankee Doodle during a takeoff from Espiritu Santo when the bomber failed to build enough speed. He aborted, but the B-17 ran off the runway and broke apart in the jungle. Two crew members died. Roddenberry survived.

He went on to create Star Trek, which turns 60 on Sept. 8, 2026. His path from the military to science fiction was unusual, but he was far from alone.

Rod Serling and Kurt Vonnegut carried combat experiences into their writing. Leonard Nimoy made Army training films. Forrest J Ackerman edited a base newspaper. Some of these men had already started writing or working in science fiction before they enlisted, but each served before producing the work for which he became best known….

(3) DOES AI DESERVE A VOICE HERE? J. Michael Straczynski offers “Fair Replies to Fair Questions Regarding The AI Essay Discussion for I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”.

Following my post about having a (very) short addendum from an AI system discussing what is arguably the first story actually about AI, a number of folks posted concerns and questions in response. The majority of those replies (minus some of the more colorful bits of invective) are well-considered, fair, and deserve a respectful response. So let’s have the conversation….

…We were nearly finished editing the solo book for Mouth, and I was rereading it one last time with an eye toward the fact that, as near as can be told, this was the first story about something we could recognize today as AI, being published at a time when AI is an actual thing.

And it felt remiss to be in that situation without commenting upon it, and finding some way to address it.

Then a thought occurred.

In the essays and commentaries contained within his books, when Harlan made a lengthy observation about someone, he would invite them to contribute a counter-argument, which he would then include in his essay.

And I wondered if something like that could be done now.

So I fed the story into ChatGPT.

To be clear on this one point, because in fairness some have raised it: as demonstrated and verified by the Anthropic lawsuit, Mouth was digitized and dumped into the AI/LLM void a long, long, very long time ago. It’s already all over the place, otherwise I would have refrained. Nothing was given that was not already there….

(4) CHARLAINE HARRIS WITHDRAWS FROM LACON V. The LAcon V Worldcon committee announced on Facebook today that “Due to personal circumstances Charlaine Harris is no longer able to attend LAcon V. We know this is disappointing news but are sure you join with us in wishing her and her family all good wishes.”

(5) WHAT IS STAR TREK’S FATE? “Paramount+ Head Of Originals Jane Wiseman Talks Programming Strategy: Q&A” at Deadline.

DEADLINE: What is your plan for the Star Trek franchise? It is at crossroads with Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy ending and no new series greenlit. If I heard you correctly, you said that something is coming. Yes?

WISEMAN: Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise. And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development.

(6) TREK ALREADY MIA. Coincidentally, author Kristine Kathryn Rusch had this to say about the franchise on Facebook yesterday.

Wow. Just saw the promo pix for the latest Trek Strange New Worlds episode and thought, “Well, another episode I’m not going to watch.” So far the series is batting zero for me. I doubt I’ll watch any more episodes. So sad. I have no idea why they decided to do gimmicky things instead of telling Trek stories. And there I was, sad there would be no Trek after their next season. Well…there’s no Trek now. Sigh.

(7) THE FUTURE LESS TRAVELED. Kameron Hurley discusses “Who We Were in the Old World”. Here’s an excerpt.

… There’s a reason I think of the world prior to 2016 as a different world. A more naive world, for me. The pace and presence of digital propaganda was known, and had been experimented with for a decade, but it was 2016 when it honed itself to a fine point. I remember telling a group of folks at Bookcon that watching Russia rear up out of the sea like a forgotten dragon was a surreal experience. But it was of course much more complicated than that. What a nice, tidy narrative that would have been! No, digital marketing had now matured, and been effectively weaponized by all sorts of actors for all sorts of reasons, and the only way back was to heavily regulate it.

That wasn’t going to happen for a long time. It made too many people rich and powerful.

The rise of LLMs was similarly devastating to my own worldview. There was a world, and my place in it. And then there… wasn’t.

I remember learning that a direct report had been secretly recording our calls with an LLM notetaker, and the feeling of sorrow and betrayal and – worse! – the feeling of being such an ancient relic that this had never even occured to me. It was overwhelming, this feeling of being a naive fossil.

The world was moving. I was working like I lived in the old world.

We were all being recorded. All being manipulated by social platforms. All being watched by Ring cameras. I had a moment when I realized all those 80s dystopia films and books I’d read had prepared me for this, of course. This was the future predicted back then, the glaring warning: stop this, or you’ll get that.

I am living in that.

Which takes me back to thinking about who I was, and the story of who I was, and how that doesn’t work anymore.

I’ve had readers revisit Geek Feminist Revolution, or read it for the first time, and what first strikes them, looking back, is how naive and hopeful it is.

“They are angry because we’re winning! This is the last gasp of a dying world! We are going to WIN!!!”

And while that’s true, and I stand by it – there is always a better future for someone, somewhere – I neglected to realize just how bad that backlash would get before we came through to the other side.

The world does not change without horror and bloodshed and madness, no matter what it’s turning into….

(8) TRUE CRIME AUTHOR DROPPED BY PUBLISHER. The Guardian reports “Christopher Berry-Dee dropped by publisher after allegations of abuse made against him”.

The main publisher of the bestselling true crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee has dropped the author after a Guardian investigation into allegations of violence and sexual abuse against him, which he denies. Waterstones has also removed his books from sale.

“We are shocked and appalled by the very serious allegations relating to Christopher Berry-Dee, and our thoughts are with those affected,” said the publisher Bonnier Books in a statement to the Guardian.

“Bonnier Books UK will no longer publish Christopher Berry-Dee, we will not work with him on any future projects, and we are terminating all existing agreements”, it continued. “There are practical steps entailed in unwinding longstanding contracts, including those involving third parties, but we are working through them as quickly as we can. We will also be removing our existing stocks from the market.”

An investigation published on Saturday detailed multiple allegations of abuse by Berry-Dee, including domestic violence and sexual assault of a 13-year-old student attending his art school. Berry-Dee refused to be interviewed for the piece, citing health issues, but denied the allegations: “I have not once committed any of the crimes you accuse me of.”

Berry-Dee, 78, is the UK’s top-selling author of true crime. His books, including Talking With Serial Killers, draw on interviews with murderers and have sold nearly 1m copies.…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 18, 1925 — Brian Aldiss. (Died 2017.)

By Paul Weimer: I first came across the work of Brian Aldiss as an editor in a used copy of an anthology that I fell hard for. That anthology was Galactic Empires, a seminal anthology of SF stories, a two-volume set of over two dozen stories set in such realms, with authors ranging from Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson to A.E. Van Vogt and Clifford Simak. The age of the stories spanned from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, showing not only a wide range of themes and ideas revolving around Galactic Empires, their rises, heights and falls, but also showed the breadth of style changes in the genre over that period. It was a snapshot of the subgenre, right at the time that Star Wars was dominating the cinema and changing SF forever, and a look backward to the roots of the subgenre as well.

I decided after reading it that I needed to learn more about Aldiss’ work. So through the rest of the 80’s and 90’s, I started tracking down his work in used bookstores where and how I could. I hit upon the Helliconia books, which is the original Long Season books (sorry, Mr. Martin) and do a better job of showing how civilization rises and falls and adapts to such long and often tumultuous seasons. The books also lack a central protagonist because they jump forward hundreds of years at a time, as well. So these books worked for me on the worldbuilding much more than characterization or plotting.

I remember trying to read Report on Probability A and bouncing off of it, and I have not dared to try it again. Maybe too literary and experimental for me? I found much better traction with the Hothouse stories, set on an Earth overrun with plantlife, and the few remaining humans looking for a way out of their increasingly restrictive circumstances. I thought of these stories a lot when reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Saturation Point, and I wonder how much he was influenced by those stories himself. Certainly, too, the far future of Cage of Souls feels like Aldiss’ Hothouse world in its positively feral jungles.

But where I landed on Aldiss is where I began with him–criticism and editorial work. Billion Year Spree was the second book length piece of SF criticism I read (after Panshin’s Heinlein in Dimension) and it opened up my eyes to the possibility of the form. Was it a germ for me to eventually do my own reviews and genre work? Maybe! As far as his editorial anthology work, I came across a bunch in used bookstores, his Year’s Best Science Fiction works. Hell’s Cartographers showed me the person behind a number of writers of stories I had read.

I always have had a feeling, no matter what I read from Aldiss, be it a story, an anthology he edited, a piece of criticism, that Aldiss had a sense of the SF field in a way that was irreplicable. And that he wanted to share this sense with readers, to express what he was seeing and feeling. He had his fingers on the pulse of science fiction–where it had been, where it was now, and where it might be going. Yes, the SF field was smaller then, and it might be impossible, now. But the breadth of his ability, from writing it, curating it to criticizing it, showed his love and understanding, warts and all, of the field.

Finally of course, his story “Supertoys last all summer long” was a basis for the Spielberg/Kubrick movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I did go down and track down the story, afterwards, and found it and its sequel, both of which have elements in the movie. And the end of Supertoys When Winter Comes hit me in the feels in a way that the movie doesn’t quite land. I can see how Kubrick and Spielberg tried to capture the spirit of the stories, but didn’t quite, in the end, succeed. But the work of Aldiss remains unblemished, important, and strong.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Broom Hilda knows another use.
Free Range gives a hard rejection.
Macanudo points out spider differences.
Moderately Confused tells a sad ending.
Wumo gives the reasons for space tourism.
Zen Pencils recommends reading.
Non Sequitur understands why people are rude.

(11) SIMAK KEEPS THE FAITH. Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations brings us “Exploration Log 16: Clifford D. Simak’s speech ‘The Face of Science Fiction’ (1953)”.

Clifford D. Simak’s speech “Face of Science Fiction” appeared in Minnesota Libraries, vol. XVII, no. 7. (September 1953). He originally gave it to the Minneapolis Branch Library staff. I have not found evidence that the speech appeared elsewhere or is anywhere online. I requested the article through the university library I’m affiliated with. I’ve included a transcription below….

… [SIMAK] I have never lost faith in science fiction. I have watched it grow and I believe it will grow still more. I am convinced that it is here to stay.

I am convinced, not because there are some thirty magazines on the stands, not because a hundred books or more of it are published each year, nor simply because it has invaded the movies, radio and television. What convinces me far more is that, outside of the written and the spoken medium, it has expanded into what even now is a comparatively large industry. Toys, games, gadgets, scientific instruments of all kinds for the teen agers and wearing apparel for youngsters are now on sale – all with the science fiction motif. You have space helmets, space guns, space suits, spaceships, and dozens of other items selling at the dime store level. When a way of life reaches the dime store level it is my contention that it finally has arrived and has arrived to stay. At the moment, the science fiction toys and gadgets are on a par with the western paraphernalia which is offered the younger set, while science fiction itself, both in quantity published and, I would like to think, in quality of writing as well, has forged ahead of the western story and the whodunit….

(12) OTHERWISE AWARDS 2026 JURY. The Otherwise Motherboard has announced three of the six members of the Otherwise Awards 2026 Jury.

Gautam Bhatia (Chair) is an Indian SFF writer, reviewer, and editor. He is the author of THE FIFTH INFLECTION (Saga Press/Solaris 2027). Originally published in India as THE SENTENCE, the novel won the 2025 Ignyte Award for best adult fiction. His other novels include the duology THE WALL and THE HORIZON (HarperCollins India). He is also the co-ordinating editor of Strange Horizons, a Hugo Award-winning weekly, online magazine of SFF that is in its 27th year of existence. His critical and editorial work focuses on SFF from the global south, extractivism in SFF, anarchist SFF, and more. In his other life, he is a constitutional lawyer.

Abigail Nussbaum is a blogger and critic, former reviews editor of Strange Horizons, and a two-time winner of the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Scientist, Locus, io9, and others, and she contributes to the politics blog Lawyers, Guns, & Money. Her review collection Track Changes was published by Briardene Books in 2024.

Akankshya Abismruta (she/her) is an independent books & culture writer based in India. She writes for numerous Indian newspapers and several digital platforms, including Strange Horizons. She is interested in all things gender, illness and disability, and translation. She lives with multiple chronic conditions and invisible disability, and copes by reading stories that disrupt power structures. She is @geekyliterati on Instagram and @akankshya.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Three other jury members have asked not to be named publicly until the end of the jury process.

The jury is now considering works for the 2026 Awards, and will announce its decisions by late May 2027; we intend to celebrate Award winners at WisCon 2027.

A transparency note about naming jurors publicly:

In most past years, we’ve announced the name of the jury chair at the beginning of each year’s Awards cycle, but haven’t publicly named the members of the jury until the end of the process.

Last year and this year, we learned that some jurors want to be publicly named at the start of the cycle, and others don’t, for a mix of reasons (all sensible). So this year, we’re refining our process, and naming only the jurors who want to be named.

When we announce this year’s Awards around May 2027, we’ll also provide the names of all of the jurors.

(13) TRAILER PARK. “Lucasfilm Releases ‘LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian’ Trailer” — Animation World Network sets the frame.

Lucasfilm has released the official trailer for LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian, an all-new animated special that debuts exclusively on Disney+ September 2. In true LEGO special style, the show retells all three seasons of the landmark live-action series as a witty comedy, revisiting familiar Star Wars stories in new and unexpected ways for families and younger audiences.

Shelby Young, who voices the Anzellans and Jawas in the special and has voiced characters in animated Star Wars titles for years, debuted the trailer from the Star Wars stage at D23 this past Friday evening…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/13/26 I Like Pixels — Snakes, You Have To Feed

Posted on August 13, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) HARTWELL’S BOOKS NOW INVENTORY. The Sun Community News celebrates: a “New bookstore opens in Westport” (New York).

Dragon Press — a two-in-one business that serves as both a bookstore and a family art and design studio — officially reopened on July 22.

Located on Champlain Avenue, the shop features a variety of science fiction, fantasy, and horror hardcover first editions from the vast collection of the late David G. Hartwell.

A native of Salem, Mass., Hartwell was an American critic, publisher, and editor of thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels, best known for his work with Tor Books and Timescape Books at Simon & Schuster.

“He edited literally thousands of books, primarily science fiction, fantasy, and horror by prominent authors like George R.R, Martin, Gene Wolfe, Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and more,” said his widow, Kathryn Cramer, who runs the shop today. “He really had a very broad impact over a long period of time.”

Unfortunately, an accidental fall led to his passing at the age of 74 in 2016. Eventually, Cramer, as Literary Executor, took over sales of his books, over 20,000 of them, that Hartwell started collecting from the age of 12.

“He was an early collector. He already had a notable collection when he was in college and then continued collecting afterward up until his passing,” said Cramer about the man who received a BA in 1963 from Williams College, an MA in 1965 from Colgate University, and a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature from Columbia University in 1973. “It’s a very impressive collection.”

And while Henry Wessels of James Cummins Bookseller, a well-known antiquarian book dealer in New York City, is handling his more high-end books, Cramer is selling the rest of his used-book collection in the shop and a future online bookstore.

Walking in today, around 3,500 of his books are lined along the walls. His neckties, which he was notorious for wearing, hang from the ceiling, along with other book covers, convention paper ephemera, and more….

(2) LIVE, LOVE, AND PROSPER. [Item by N.] A flag for anyone in the Illinois area: there’s a large estate sale in Downer’s Grove (started today, continuing into Friday and Saturday). Among the items being sold is a large collection of vintage Star Trek memorabilia, which includes vintage Kirk/Spock slash fanfiction, some of which may or may not have been previously lost.

(3) THREE FORMER ‘DOCTORS’ WILL GUEST ON MYSTERY SERIES. “’Only Murders In The Building’ Adds Peter Capaldi To Season 6 Cast” reports Deadline.

It’s only murders in the building and mostly actors who have played Doctor Who‘s title character in the upcoming sixth season of Hulu‘s murder mystery comedy.

Peter Capaldi, who portrayed the Twelfth Doctor, has been cast as a recurring guest star in the London-set installment of Only Murders In the Building. He joins fellow Season 6 recurring cast additions Jodie Whittaker, who was Capaldi’s successor and the first woman to portray the iconic Time Lord, and the actor most closely associated with the role, David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor and the Fourteenth Doctor. Additionally, part of OMITB‘s upcoming season is Jim Broadbent, who played an alternate version of the Eleventh Doctor in the 1999 Comic Relief special Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death.

The previously announced S6 recurring guest stars also include Nicola Coughlan, Richard Ayoade, Adrian Lukis, Kathryn Hunter, Jennifer Saunders, Sean Teale, Simone Ashley, Amar Chadha-Patel, Rhea Norwood, Matthew Beard, Sharon Horgan, Martin Freeman, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Jamie Demetriou, Anjana Vasan, Jane Horrocks, Derek Jacobi and Lesley Nicol.

Production on the new season continues in the U.K.. This marks the first time the comedy mystery series has ventured outside of the U.S., as the crime-solving trio of Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) leaves New York City to investigate London’s newest mystery.

(4) BRITISH LIBRARY PROGRAMMING. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Cheery news from the British Library. “American Writers’ Week”. Program is both in-person and online. Ticket information at the link.

Join us for the British Library’s American Writers’ Week (28 September – 2 November), presented in association with Festival America, Vincennes, France.

Participating writers include Alison Bechdel, Armistead Maupin, Daniel Kraus, Jeanine Cummins, Joyce Carol Oates, Katie Kitamura, Rabih Alameddine and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Including “American Writers’ Week: Daniel Kraus”.

A rare chance to hear from one of the most adventurous writers of our time, recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Angel Down. This astonishing cinematic horror novel about survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict, set amongst the grit and mud of the trenches in WW1, was described by The Pulitzer committee as ‘a stylistic tour-de-force that blends such genres as allegory, magical realism, and science fiction into a cohesive whole, told in a single sentence’.

Daniel Kraus is also the multi award winning author of Whalefall, now a major film starring starring Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue; co-author of The Shape of Water and Trollhunters alongside Guillermo del Toro and co-writer of The Living Dead and Pay the Piper with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero.

In conversation with serial horror anthologist Johnny Mains.

(5) M. JOHN HARRISON’S INFLUENCES. BBC Radio 4’s Take Four Books features “M. John Harrison” on August 16.

The writer M. John Harrison speaks to Take Four Books about his latest novel, The End of Everything, and, together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its connections to three other works. The End of Everything follows the characters of Phillip Tennent and his elderly aunt Marnie. A crisis has happened. The exact nature of which remains obscure, but government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures and Europe has been mislaid. Is this the end?

For his three influences M. John Harrison chose: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham which was published in 1961 and released as a film two years later; Drought by J. G. Ballard from 1965; and a short story called The Same Dog by Robert Aickman from 1974.

(6) MAGIC: THE GATHERING PROFILED. The August 12 Marketplace Morning Report features “Putting the magic in Magic: The Gathering”.

Today, we hear what it takes to bring the fantastical world of Magic: The Gathering to life.

And there’s a segment on “How designers for Magic: The Gathering started out”.

Meet the professionals behind Magic: The Gathering’s fantastical worlds.

Trading card games — like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon — surged during the pandemic, as more people searched for comfort and nostalgia. But unlike some other COVID-era trends, their popularity has stuck around.

Take Magic: The Gathering, for example. Hasbro said that the game’s revenue jumped 32% in the second quarter, to a record $545 million.

This week on “What’s That Like” we’re meeting some of the workers who bring the Magic ecosystem to life.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 13, 1899 — Alfred Hitchcock. (Died 1980.)

By Paul Weimer: Alfred Hitchcock came to my attention in drips and drabs at first, hearing his name, hearing about him, and hearing about his work. But until I was an adult, I had not actually seen a single complete version of any of his movies. I finally decided to watch Psycho, and see what the fuss was all about. Although it is somewhat atypical of his works, I indeed was blown away by the cinematography, the writing, the narrative and the tight revelations. I saw his economy of motion and action, the precision of his movies.

I was hooked and started renting all the Hitchcock I could get. Rear Window, long before I got into photography, fascinated me. (Also, Grace Kelly to be honest). Vertigo seems the least “fun” of his movies, but the most technically and narratively precise. It’s a beautiful film in how it all comes together.

The Birds showed me his horror and thriller side. Movies like Rebecca showed me an earlier side to his work, showing his ability then to create all sorts of compelling characters. Hitchcock is a director whose work I can study on multiple levels and multiple times and always find something new.

My favorite of his movies is lighter fare by any standard, and that would be To Catch a Thief. An excuse to put Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on the French Riviera and see what happens? Maybe! It’s not as perfect as some of the other movies I’ve named and it’s definitely lighter, often comedic in tone. But the chemistry of Grant and Kelly, the scenery, and the classic “thief gets blamed for new crimes he didn’t do” setup is timeless. I can watch it again and again and never, ever get bored. Much like the rest of Hitchcock’s work, come to think.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal compares pain/pleasure levels.
Baby Blues puts the brakes on research.
Mother Goose and Grimm shouldn’t gossip.
xkcd has an unstable design.

(9) LEST DARKNESS FALL. A solar eclipse was visible from Europe on August 12. The Guardian shares a gallery: “Solar eclipse 2026 across Europe: in pictures”.

A total solar eclipse swept across parts of Europe and the North Atlantic on 12 August, with the path of totality moving through Greenland, Iceland, Spain and a small section of north-eastern Portugal, while surrounding areas across Europe experienced a partial solar eclipse, according to the European Space Agency

(10) AND THE BANDS PLAYED ON. “During the total solar eclipse of July 8, 1842, an astronomer watched the ground itself start to ripple — thin bands of light chasing each other across open earth in the last seconds before the sky went fully dark, and 184 years later, nobody has proven why” at SpaceDaily.

During the total solar eclipse of 8 July 1842, observers across Europe recorded a strange effect in the final moments before totality: faint, wavering bands of light and shadow moving rapidly across the ground, a phenomenon now known as shadow bands. According to the astronomer and writer George F. Chambers, whose 1902 book The Story of Eclipses is one of the earliest detailed compilations of eclipse observations, England’s Astronomer Royal, George Biddell Airy, noted “undulations” along the thinning crescent of the Sun roughly six minutes before totality that year. The 1842 eclipse is often cited as one of the earliest well-documented sightings of the effect, though as the astronomy writer Joe Rao has pointed out, “nobody can state with certainty as to when shadow bands were first noted.”

(11) HANDMADE. Viral Hand-Drawn Spider-Man: Brand New Day Poster Artist Speaks (hollywoodreporter.com)

The promotional materials for Spider-Man: Brand New Day look a bit different in one theater in Canada, and the internet is loving it.

A Famous Players theater in Prince George, British Columbia, almost certainly has the most unique movie poster for the record-breaking film led by Tom Holland. It features a hand-drawn illustration by employee Drake Landon that was inspired by the Spooder-Man meme, with the title of the movie written in font strikingly similar to the script in the official promotional materials.

The movie theater did not receive the official movie poster in time for its release, which led to Landon creating an original drawing to be put in its place in the cinema. That was explained in his now-viral illustration, as a note on the poster reads, “Sorry! We never recieved the real posters! Sorry for any inconviniences!” (Yes, with those exact spelling errors and all, adding to the amusement surrounding the sketch.)

Pictures of the poster have gained widespread attention online, with one Reddit post receiving upward of 51,000 upvotes. Landon tells The Hollywood Reporter the reaction to his Spider-Man poster has been “very unexpected,” and he’s “kinda still not realizing how big it is.”…

(12) HARD TO FOLD UP AGAIN. “Scientists create largest 2D map of the universe with 5.6 trillion pixels and nearly 4 billion cosmic objects” at Space.com.

Astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created, offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky.

The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys team, contains a staggering 5.6 trillion pixels and combines more than 263,000 telescope exposures collected over more than a decade. The observations span visible and near-infrared wavelengths, providing an enormous portrait of stars, galaxies and other cosmic phenomena across the sky, according to a statement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) NOIRLab. (You can explore the full data here.)

“It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” David Schlegel, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in the statement. “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.”…

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

Pixel Scroll 8/12/26 I Tell Stories; That Doesn’t Mean They’re True, Does It?

Posted on August 12, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) BUTLER BOOK IS BACK. The Huntington in Pasadena, CA will host “Reading Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Lost’ Novel” on September 2 from 6-8 p.m. Attendees will be able to get Butler’s Survivor, which has been long out of print. Ticket information at the link.

Be among the first to get your hands on legendary speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s novel, ‘Survivor’, out in a new edition Sept. 1.

Returning to print after nearly 50 years, Survivor extends Butler’sPatternist series, telling the story of a woman struggling to stay alive on a warring planet far from Earth. The new edition includes essays from Alyssa Collins, The Huntington’s inaugural Octavia E. Butler Research Fellow.

Gather with fellow book lovers to hear Collins in conversation with Butler scholars Alaina Morgan (USC) and Phoenix Alexander (UCR). Learn more about this exciting novel, the decision to reprint it, and what Butler’s archives at The Huntington can tell us about her thoughts regarding its composition and publication.

Survivor will be available for purchase. This event is sponsored by Hachette Book Group.

(2) CAN DO. The New York Times tells “How Nigel Farage Ended Up Running Against Count Binface in Clacton”. “Nigel Farage forced a new election in his parliamentary seat after coming under pressure over his finances. His main challenger is Count Binface, a novelty candidate.” In theory this link bypasses the NYT paywall, but it mostly doesn’t.

Count Binface, a man in a trash can costume, was trying to explain why he would be a winner no matter what happened on Thursday in the most high-profile election he’s ever fought.

“Shall we do a little flowchart?” he asked me, gesturing with his gloved fingers.

If you haven’t been following British politics, you may be wondering why I was interviewing someone who claims to be an intergalactic space warrior from the planet Sigma IX. Count Binface is a character played by the writer and comedian Jon Harvey, 46, and he has run in several elections as part of Britain’s long tradition of novelty political candidates.

Now he is heading for his biggest gig yet. He is the main opposition to Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist party Reform U.K., in a special parliamentary election in Clacton, an area on England’s eastern coast….

Count Binface, a candidate in Britain’s upcoming general election, poses for photographers during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Saturday, June 29, 2024. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

(3) LUNCH IS SERVED. “Skywalker Grill opens bookings ahead of hotly anticipated $1B Lucas Museum debut” reports Yahoo!

May the forks be with you!

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced the debut of Skywalker Grill Wednesday, an out-of-this-world restaurant inspired by the essence of George Lucas’ creative workplace Skywalker Ranch.

The long-awaited museum, alongside the Grill, will open its doors next month to the public — art enthusiasts, cinephiles and Star Wars fanatics alike have been anticipating the grand opening of the museum since an official unveiling date was announced in November 2025.

The menu will incorporate locally-grown ingredients to make up its classic American fare. Some options include a Skywalker Ranch Wagyu burger, Dungeness crab cakes, lobster corn dogs, house-made pastas, seasonal salads and communal appetizers…

(4) COULD IT BE…MALARKEY? [Item by Steven French.] Theatre critic Michael Billington adopts a somewhat jaundiced view towards claims that The Game of Thrones prequel The Mad King is ‘Shakespearean’, despite it being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company: “Game of Thrones, Shakespearean? What fools these mortals be!” in the Guardian.

As a latecomer to Game of Thrones, I am struck by how many people tell me it is “very Shakespearean”. It is as if they need to justify its heady escapism and heavy reliance on bonking and brutality. But its debt to the Bard – apart from the rivalry between the houses of Lannister and Stark – rests mainly on the casting. Watching the first 11 episodes, I noticed four Lears past and to come (Julian Glover, David Bradley, Oliver Ford-Davies and Roger Allam), a Macbeth (Sean Bean), a Hamlet and Henry V (Iain Glen) and a Cassius (Michelle Fairley) among many others.

Because it is presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company and staged by Dominic Cooke, who memorably directed The Hollow Crown on television, we shall doubtless hear the same arguments about Game of Thrones: The Mad King at Stratford. But, although there are frequent nods to Shakespeare, they totally lack the resonance of the original….

(5) FRANKENSTEINLY SPEAKING. “Chris Carter on How the Real World Has Caught Up With ‘The X-Files’” at Gizmodo.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: The director’s cut is billed as being more horror-oriented than the original. But other things have also changed—the movie’s a few minutes shorter, some scenes are re-edited, and there are some musical swaps too. What was the process like as you decided what to change?

Chris Carter: There were things I wanted to put back in to make it the scary movie I always imagined it [would be], but there are also things I wanted to take out….

… And when I talk about horror elements, I’m realizing I keep talking about this as a horror movie. It’s really an X-Files horror movie. The original idea came to me when I read a story about a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, who had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, and he did it successfully. I thought that’s X-Files territory right there. So I went and sought this guy out, and he explained to me how he had done it and the process … so [I Want to Believe co-writer] Frank Spotnitz and I set about trying to tell an X-Files story about this very thing…

… I’ll tell you the reason to do this director’s cut. It came out of an experience that I had when I showed I Want to Believe to the executives. They watched it. The lights went up and they were angry. They said, “This is not the PG-13 movie you promised you’d make for us. This is torture porn,” they called it, which is a term often used to reference movies like the Saw movies. But, you know, this wasn’t a Saw movie. This was an X-Files movie. But we had to cut it back to satisfy them…

(6) MONSTER TIMES CO-FOUNDER EULOGIZED. “The Passing of a Visionary: Remembering Larry Brill, Co-Founder of ‘The Monster Times’” — Dream Saga pays tribute. (See Steve Vertlieb’s own account from File 770 yesterday, “Remembering Larry Brill And ‘The Monster Times’”.)

…Larry Brill was not merely a businessman; he was a cultural provocateur. In the early 1970s, the landscape of horror fandom was dominated by glossy magazines like James Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland. Brill and Waldstein envisioned something different: a bi-weekly tabloid that treated the “fantastic” with the urgency and layout of a major metropolitan newspaper.

The Monster Times premiered in January 1972. While industry insiders predicted a swift and expensive failure, the publication defied the odds, running for 48 issues until 1976. It became a cornerstone of the “Second Wave” of horror fandom, providing a platform for serious film scholarship, investigative reporting on special effects, and a training ground for the next generation of film critics.

Brill’s personality was as much a part of the publication’s DNA as the monsters on the cover. A fierce advocate for human rights and an outspoken participant in cultural debates, he ensured that The Monster Times was more than just a fan magazine—it was a reflection of a creative, adventurous, and often provocative spirit….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

August 12, 1931 — William Goldman. (Died 2018.)

By Paul Weimer: William Goldman was a screenwriter par excellence, so you probably think I am going to mostly talk about The Princess Bride in this piece. And you would be right, we’ll start there. He adapted his own novel (which had not really found an audience) into one of the greatest screenplays in movie history. It’s the kind of movie roleplayers quote and reference endlessly, it’s a movie with verve, and love, and drama, and everything that viewers of any age could possibly want. I didn’t get to see it until 1990 or so on a videotape of it. I wondered why the Wonder Years kid was the grandson of an old looking Columbo, but I highly enjoyed it.

As my mother was a big fan of WWF (at the time) wrestling, I particularly liked seeing Andre the Giant, especially because in a few short years, he would get less and less mobile and capable, but in the movie he is delightfully fully able. The swordfighting scene is a masterpiece, the duelists actually performing the real swordsmanship schools as they are fighting. (Was 7th Sea the RPG born thanks to this sword fighting sequence?). And so much more.

And Goldman is much more than The Princess Bride. He wrote the screenplay for All the President’s Men although he wasn’t happy with the changes to it. He wrote the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also did the screenplay for a number of other movies I’ve loved…Heat, Misery, Maverick, Dreamcatcher, and The Ghost and the Darkness. His oeuvre was varied, his scripts excellent, and his talent undeniable. My favorite remains The Princess Bride, but I think you expected that. I’ll blame Vizzini.

William Goldman. Photo by Bernard Gotfryd

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Herman knows the family.
Mother Goose and Grimm applaud self-determination.
Off the Mark demonstrates a new app.
Reality Check has a super-horrible pun.
The Argyle Sweater lists hilariously-named failed cartoons.

(9) TREK COMIC. Charlie Jane Anders announces “I’ve Written a Star Trek Comic!” at Happy Dancing.

… I have loved Star Trek for as long as I can remember. Literally, somewhere there exists a photo of me aged seven or eight wearing my homemade Starfleet uniform — which I probably wore to school, let’s be real. I’ve also been a massive fan of Star Trek tie-in media forever. Star Trek is how I first became a fan of the legendary Vonda McIntyre and the iconic John M. Ford. I will always consider Diane Duane’s Rihannsu novels to be the definitive version of the Romulans. I still have a collected edition of the Gold Key comics that I defaced as a small child with lots of terrible doodles and scribbles. I have a complete set of Peter David’s New Frontier novels, along with a smattering of his other Trek books and comics. And last but definitely not least, I’ve been absolutely blown away by everything IDW has been doing with the Star Trek comics for the past few years.

More than any other big science fiction or fantasy universe, I’ve always seen Star Trek as being at least as much about the novels and comics as the TV shows and movies.

So yeah — when I was approached to write a Star Trek comic, I was over the moon. Especially the opportunity to start a title from scratch, with a brand new ship and a mostly new crew, including a few characters from existing TV shows, felt like a massive gift. The comic I’m writing is called Star Trek: Zero Point and the first issue is out October 14. However, if you want to make sure your local comic book store sets aside a copy for you and you don’t lose out, you only have until September 7 to request it. This is a weird quirk of how comics work — they’re non-returnable, so if you really want to read something, you absolutely need to ask for it over a month before-hand.

Star Trek: Zero Point takes place five years after the end of the Picard TV show….

… One thing I can tease about the opening storyline is that we’re visiting an eyeball planet! Long-time readers of my work will know that I am obsessed with tidally-locked planets, meaning planets where one side faces towards the sun and the other side is always locked in darkness. Many tidally-locked planets are believed to be so cold that they are covered entirely with ice except for a small dot of liquid water where the planet is closest to the sun — hence eyeball. To make this work, I ended up talking to four physicists and exoplanet scientists, including a former NASA scientist. I’m super passionate about including real science in this comic wherever I can…

(10) DOGS RECOGNISE HUMAN EXPRESSIONS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “We should smile at our dogs – a new scientific study reveals why” at BBC. (Subscription required for readers outside the UK.)

Now scientists have worked out exactly what is going on inside a dog’s brain when it sees a human – even a complete stranger – smiling or scowling.

Their research involved 14 dogs in total who all sat very still in a brain scanner while they were shown pictures of people’s faces.

Photographs of happy, smiling human faces made an area of the brain that is associated with reward “light up” with activity.

This reward circuitry is the part of the brain that is activated when we enjoy and remember good things, like tasty food or praise.

In terms of our own brains, we often refer to it as the “hit” or “high” that is triggered by winning a game or even receiving a positive comment on a social media post….

Primary research for above is here.

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

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

Posted on August 9, 2026 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the choices is –

Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster (1982)

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

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

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

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

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

At the top of the list is –

‘Severance’ (2022–Present)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Frazz appreciates the night sky.
Junk Drawer presents an inspiring scene.
Liō lives a quote.
Non Sequitur denies the power of AI.
Speed Bump questions avian superiority.
Wumo bumps into the next advance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pixel Scroll 8/8/26 For Tuppence More, Up Scrolls The Pixel!

Posted on August 8, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) WORLD FANTASY AWARD BALLOT EXPLANATION. The reason for removing The Essential Patricia McKillip from the Collections category, according the award administrator Peter Dennis Pautz, is that “nominees for a World Fantasy Award had to be alive during the year of eligibility.” McKillip died in 2022.

Thanks to everyone who pointed out that this actually was explained in Pautz’ email.

(2) ANA AND DIN. Laura Miller tells Slate readers “Robert Jackson Bennett’s Ana and Din Mysteries are books I recommend over and over”. (Behind a paywall.)

It’s a strange world, the one in which Ana and Din—the two investigators in Robert Jackson Bennett’s fascinating mystery series—live and solve crimes. In some aspects, it resembles Victorian England, that cradle of detective fiction, and Ana and Din recall the dynamic between Sherlock Holmes and Watson: the brilliant, eccentric master detective and her bemused but ever-ready sidekick. The people of their Khanum Empire travel in horse-drawn carriages, navigate through a hierarchical class system, and benefit from technological advancements that verge on the miraculous. But that technology! It’s very weird, a system of biological enhancements and alterations to living creatures. Instead of engines and machines, the scientists in Ana and Din’s world shape plants, fungi, insects, and other life forms to build houses, light the darkness, lock doors, and perform most of the jobs that need doing in a relatively advanced culture.

Fantasy and mystery can be tricky to combine. Part of what makes the Ana and Din series so much fun is watching how deftly Bennett integrates those genres, playing off the freedom of an invented world against the strict rules of the fair-play detective story. The result is wildly imaginative, sometimes pointed, often hair-raising, and very entertaining, a series that has been a hit with everyone I’ve recommended it to….

(3) MORE ABOUT THE THREE LAWS. “’Asimov was right’ about rules for robots, says ex-US Cyber Director” in The Register.

Don’t waste time worrying about AI models achieving sentience – they’re essentially already there, according to former US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis.

“If they pass the Turing test to everyone that they come into contact with, they’re probably already there,” he told The Register during an interview at the Black Hat security conference. “They don’t have the kind of agency and aspiration that comes with sentience, but they have something approaching it.”

Inglis says he’s worried about AI autonomy.

“What I’m worried about is that they get to choose what and where they do something, and under what rules they do it,” he said, pointing to the recent rash of rogue AI agents autonomously hacking people and organizations.

Over the past few weeks, both OpenAI and Anthropic admitted that their models escaped from their cages during security tests and compromised multiple third parties. Then on Thursday, Meta added its models to the sandbox-escape club.

While all of these admissions strongly smell of marketing stunts, they also “constitute an enormous threat to systems that are not protected from, and are not designed, in a world where this exists,” Inglis said. “These two things can exist at the same time.”

Plus, the models’ actions shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, he added.

Inglis likens the AIs to a dog in a backyard told to hunt rabbits. “And you leave the gate open. You’re going to find it three yards away, possibly at the grade school, hunting rabbits. You should not be surprised …The mix of autonomy and persistence created this maliciously insidious effect.”

All three companies, when talking about the models’ autonomous actions, describe them with a mix of shock, awe, and admiration. OpenAI’s Eric Wallace, in a Black Hat briefing about the Hugging Face breach, called it “the most qualitatively interesting example of AI capabilities that I’ve ever seen.”

(4) SMITHSONIAN ONLINE LECTURES. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] The Smithsonian Associates late summer/fall program of online lectures has a number of items of 770ish interest. Here are a few of them. Tickets available at the links.

Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps, and Matter – Smithsonian Associates – August 20, 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

Matthew Shindell, the National Air and Space Museum’s curator of earth and planetary science, provides a guided tour of the moon and the historic love affair with Earth’s only natural satellite, weaving together the various narratives and themes that have given the Moon meaning throughout human history. From ancient carvings and cave paintings to contemporary cinema, medieval Christian ideas about the structure of the cosmos to present-day lunar science and exploration, and early fictional tales of voyages to the moon to planning a successor to the Apollo lunar landings of the 1960s and 70s, the moon and our ideas about it have a deep history.

The Ecology of Dinosaurs – Smithsonian Associates – September 16, 6:30 p.m. Eastern

For more than 140 million years, dinosaurs were among the dominant land animals on Earth. Thousands of species lived and died across all climates and environments and on every landmass, evolving a spectacular diversity of sizes and shapes that scientists are still uncovering today. The National Museum of Natural History’s curator of Dinosauria, paleontologist Matthew Carrano, explores what life was like for dinosaurs in these ecosystems….

Paranoia on Screen: The Sci-Fi and Horror Movies of the Cold War Era – Smithsonian Associates – October 20, 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

“They’re after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! They’re here already! You’re next!”

So warns Kevin McCarthy in Don Siegel’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of many memorable science-fiction chillers of the 1950s Cold War decade—a time when moviegoers were threatened by everything ranging from flying saucers to fearsome extraterrestrial beasts. And Kevin wasn’t exaggerating; they were after all of us….

…Danger always lurked beneath deceptively pleasant excursions to the moon (Destination Moon), Venus (Queen of Outer Space), and planet Altair IV (Forbidden Planet ). But things were just as threatening back here at home as mutated creatures burst forth from caves, seabeds, and far beneath the Earth’s surface. Technology and science ran amuck on screen as moviemakers from Hollywood and England to Japan addressed the tensions and uncertainties associated with scientific, political, and technological developments during the Truman-Eisenhower years.

Join film historian Max Alvarez on a multimedia mission from Earth to outer space featuring out-of-this-world selections of spine-tingling 1950s horror/sci-fi films from studios large and small.

(5) TUTTLE REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle reviews The Salt King by Natasha Pulley; A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett; Netherwood by Jake Arnott; and Fawn by CN Vair in “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – review roundup” in the Guardian.

(6) IT’S ALIVE, JIM! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Is Venus alive or dead? (And by live, I mean geologically active.) One of the prevailing views is that that the planet is tectonically inactive. A trio of European astrophysicists have looked at NASA’s detailed altitude map created with radar that can pierce Venus’s clouds. Rift valleys form in regions of a planet where the upper layer – called the lithosphere – is being pulled apart. The researchers simulated rift formation on Venus for various lithospheric thicknesses, deformation behaviours and spreading rates. Venus’s rift valleys have steep, uplifted sides and are generally wider than those on Earth. In the researchers’ model, such structures are consistent with a strong, thick, fast-spreading lithosphere. The most detailed observations of Venus have not found evidence of geological activity, but the researchers’ findings possibly suggest that rifting on the planet could well be ongoing…. The process is likely to be lid tectonoics.

[We] demonstrate that wide rift flank uplifts strongly indicate either presently ongoing Venusian rifting or activity within the past few tens of millions of years.

The primary research is Yang, X. et al (2026) “Recent active rifting on Venus revealed by wide rift flank uplifts”. vol. 19, p880–886.

(7) JOHN CROWLEY (1942-2026). Author John Crowley died on August 8 at the age of 83. He was best known for his novel Little, Big and the Ægypt series. He also wrote acclaimed novels including The Deep (1975), Beasts (1976), Engine Summer (1979), and Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr (2017).

Crowley twice won the World Fantasy Award, in 1982 for his novel Little, Big, and in 1990 for his novella “Great Work of Time”. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2006.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

By Paul Weimer: What can one say about one of the quintessential films, The Wizard of Oz? I came across it on WPIX, as you might guess. I caught bits and pieces of it growing up but it was in my early teens that I finally saw the movie and fell into Baum’s world.

It was innovative and enthralling, a black and white Kansas giving way to a technicolor Oz. The visuals of the movie, from start to finish, from reality to the fantasy realm of Oz and back again, are painstakingly and excellently done, for 1939, or even today.

I was not one who wanted to go run away to Oz, but I was definitely willing to visit, Wicked Witches and all. Even then, young me wanted to know how Oz worked and why it worked. There were (at least within the original movie) so many questions I had about Oz and how it actually worked in practice as a society, as a realm. But in the end, the movie hits you in the feels, and, to use modern parlance, is a true “found family” movie.

Yes, I know it all appears a dream at the end and all the characters have analogs in the real world, but it does feel like while she is in Oz, Dorothy is choosing and creating a family of her own, one that supports and loves her. That’s a subtext a lot of people can get behind, then, or even today, and I think that’s why the movie resonates with me forever.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Ravens in the Library: Magic in the Bard’s Name (2009)

By Cat Eldridge: I get a lot of personally signed books and Ravens in The Library showed up in the post some sixteen years ago with a note asking if Green Man would review it. I already knew of SJ Tucker, a singer-songwriter who does a lot of filk, sort of filk and of course straight singer-songwriter material. You can hear her doing Catherynne Valente’s “A Girl in The Garden” here, riffing The Orphan’s Garden as she gave it to Green Man.

She also writes children’s books and we reviewed one here, Rabbit’s Song, she wrote with Trudy Herring.

Sadly she got a severe illness starting in 2008 caused her to have a very long hospital stay and related surgery, and left her to recover under the weight of massive medical bills. As you well know, independent musicians don’t have deep pockets, so her friends launched a number of projects to generate the needed monies.

So what did they do? Well the most successful project is sitting on my desk, The Ravens in the Library anthology. Three hundred and seventy pages of ballads, poems, songs and stories amply illustrated by far too many stellar artists too note here. The great cover which you can see left is James A. Owen

The writers here are, well, let’s just say I was gobsmacked. Charles de Lint, and Terri Winding to name but two that I really like are here as well as Ari Berk usually known for his illustrations does a story too, as does Catherynne Valente, Holly Black, and, of course, S.J. Tucker contribute excellent work too. It would be wrong to overlook the work by writers that I’ve never heard of, most likely from the fan community, who are just as great.

I’d be remiss not to mention the excellent editing work of Phil Brucato and Sandra Buskirk.

So how successful was it? This anthology in less than a week paid off all of her considerable medical bills. Very impressive!

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal knows furries run the universe.
Jerry King threatens a terrible fate.
Off the Mark receives a visit from Mr. Pedant.
Six Chix depicts light reading.

(11) STRIP TEASE. The LA Times tells how a “Man lives in Sunset Strip billboard apartment as part of Netflix stunt”. (Behind a paywall.) It’s part of the publicity for The Last House.

Los Angeles residents and tourists alike flocked to Sunset Boulevard and Selma Avenue in West Hollywood Friday morning.

Instead of coming to catch a glimpse of the storied Chateau Marmont, the historic hotel beloved by celebrities and New Yorkers alike a block away, people were there to take photos of and see one particular billboard about 30 feet above the ground.

A man who has not been publicly identified has been “living” inside the billboard since Thursday, in what resembles a fully furnished, air-conditioned living room. Sometimes, he waved to the people outside while holding a coffee mug in his other hand. Other times, he used a pair of binoculars to look outside.

He was wearing blue pajama pants and a bathrobe — sometimes red, other times blue — and carrying a dry-erase whiteboard that he used to “talk” to people walking by.

“I’m stuck,” read one message that he flashed to the spectators below.

The “living room” was furnished with what appeared to be a bookshelf, plants, a coffee table, an armchair, a desk chair and even paintings on the walls. Thick, red curtains adorned the “window,” which the man used to peer outside.

Below the window is the phrase “How long can you survive?” written on the blue shutters of the “house.”…

(12) REUBEN AWARDS. The Daily Cartoonist has the “80th Annual Reuben Award Winners”.

The National Cartoonists Society held its annual banquet Friday night, August 7, 2026. The highlight being the naming of award winners in the various categories for their 2025 efforts.

The winners for the Divisional Awards were…

Liniers for Advertising/Product Illustration
Pedro Delgado (GogoPedro) for Art for Animated Media
Jason Chatfield for Book Illustration
Stan Sakai for Comic Book
Pedro X. Molina for Editorial
Tom Toro for Gag Cartoon
Pierre-Alexandre Comtois for Graphic Novel
Nick Galifianakis for Magazine/Newspaper Illustration
Dave Blazek for Newspaper Panel
Liniers for Newspaper Comic Strip
Katie Cook for Online Comic Long Form
Ricardo y Nacho for Online Comic Short Form
Chuck Dillon for Variety Entertainment

Winning The Reuben as Cartoonist of the Year was

Mark Tatulli

Special Awards:

Jeff Smith was recognized with The Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.
Adrian Sinnott accepted The Gold Key on behalf of The Berndt Toast Gang.
And Ed Steckley was honored with The Silver T-Square Award.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I liked the series but felt a little short-changed even as a kid…. (not enough connecting series plot arc)

The Invaders (1967): The Banned Ending They Hid For Over 59 Years at Past America

The Invaders (1967) became one of television’s most memorable sci-fi series, but its original vision included deleted scenes, alternate storylines, and an ending that audiences were never meant to see. In this video, we uncover the mystery behind the banned ending and reveal the hidden production secrets that remained buried for over five decades.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew (not Werdna), Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

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Tag Archives: Paul Weimer

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