26 And May A Leprechaun Dance In Your Pixels

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) BITE ATTACK FOLLOWS AI ART CHALLENGE AT BRISBANE CON. “Man banned from Oz Comic-Con after biting incident in Brisbane” reports Australia’s ABC News.

A man has been banned from Oz Comic-Con after allegedly biting one of the artists on Sunday afternoon.

Police were called to the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in South Bank.

A police spokesperson told 612 ABC no formal complaint was filed, but they were aware of the incident.

“All parties have been banned from the venue and future events,” the spokesperson said.

Footage supplied to the ABC shows Zyllion stall-holder Bowie Chong in a heated argument with another vendor, Victoria Manton-Williams at about 2:40pm.

Manton-Williams told the ABC she asked Chong whether his art was AI-generated, prompting him to tell her to “f*** off”.

Manton-Williams alleged Chong snatched the phone away from her artist friend who was filming the scene.

Manton-Williams said her friend pushed Chong, who then allegedly bit her friend’s arm and “latched on”.

Manton-Williams said she ran over and tried to pull Chong off of her friend and that she was pushed to the ground and kicked in the arm.

Manton-Williams said her friend went to the hospital to receive antibiotics for the bite, which had turned dark red from bruising.

She said the whole encounter was bizarre.

“I’ve never actually heard of anyone getting bitten at a convention in general,” Manton-Williams said.

“I did not even think it was in the realm of possibility that when I went up to ask this guy a question that he would run out and bite someone.

“It’s not normal behaviour — not even cosplayers go around biting each other.”

Chong has not responded to the ABC’s requests for comment. Zyllion’s website and social media pages have been deleted….

… Oz Comic-Con would not say what its policy was on AI-generated art or products at its conventions….

(2) IMAGINARY FRIEND…OR SOMETHING. Cory Doctorow’s latest essay on chatbots is well worth reading. “The Claude Delusion (21 Sep 2026)” at Pluralistic.

…Figuring out intentions is our minds’ reflexive preoccupation. It’s what keeps us from dying in traffic, it’s what lets us win at poker. It’s the key to love and parenting, to effective management and “managing up.” It’s why we get mad at people, and why we forgive them. It’s why our hearts race in sympathy with the characters in a book or on a screen. It’s the automatic and irresistible starting point for every encounter with a poem, a song, a book or a sculpture. It’s the most fundamental difference between a sculpture of a tree and a tree: the tree grew all on its own, while the sculpture was made, on purpose, by another person with another mind.

This reflex to attribute intention explains why AI is so controversial, so compelling, and so eerie. Mark Fisher defines eeriness as “when there is something present where there should be nothing, or if there is nothing present when there should be something”:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

To look upon an AI-generated text or image is to look upon a thing that was extruded, not chosen. You can slip and prompt an AI-generated image of a sunset, and it will embody no intentionality on anyone’s part.

This isn’t something we have any experience with. When we see a painting, we reflexively interpret it as having a painter. When we read a book, we reflexively impute auctorial intent to its words. When we converse, we reflexively form a theory about the mind directing the other half of the conversation….

…To “converse” with an AI is to carry on a dialog with a fictional character, who is no more real than the imaginary people in a novel. Indeed, the chatbot is less real than the character, because the character is the product of another mind, while the chatbot’s words are the product of complex mathematical operations conducted over a massive database of all the words humans have uttered, arranged by their frequency in relation to one another. When that math makes something beautiful or striking, it’s like a sunset: no matter how striking it is, it’s empty. No one chose those colors. No one chose those words.

In other words, when we interact with an AI, we hallucinate the person on the other side of the interaction. Those hallucinations are far more common and far more consequential than any AI-generated “hallucinations” (these are more properly called “errors” or “defects”)….

(3) CRIMINAL KNOWLEDGE. Publishers Weekly reports “Unsealed Files Show Open AI/Microsoft Knew Copying Was Illegal and Could Hurt Authors”.

Less than two weeks after the Authors Guild and Open AI/Microsoft filed for summary judgment in their copyright infringement case, newly unsealed comments made in briefs filed by the tech giants reveal that executives knew they were illegally training their products on copyrighted books and that AI generated books would likely displace human-authored books in the market. Moreover, executive comments also suggested that some publishing industry employees will lose their jobs.

One Open AI note of August 2019 states bluntly: “We trained GPT-3 on pirated stuff! No sharing that!”*

The Authors Guild has highlighted some of the now public comments made by OpenAI executives in the case. “The better we do on GPT-X, the more worried genre fiction authors will become about us substituting for them on Amazon,” OpenAI policy director Jack Clark stated in testimony given in May 2020. He further acknowledged that while “there will be a point where a bunch of artists express worry about what we’re doing here and we’ll likely ignore their concerns and release anyway.”

The filings also point to the hiring of Tarun Gogineni in 2022 to lead OpenAI’s efforts to improve the writing quality of its models. The documents show that Gogineni stated that his “research mission” was to create a machine that would supplant human authors. Along those lines, the brief states that Gogineni was aware of authors’ complaints that the ‘datasets are stolen’ and that authors were losing work to AI-generated competition. Nevertheless as the brief goes on, he did not find those complaints ‘all that sympathetic’ and instead viewed them as ‘acceptable economic disruption.’ He wrote that the world would soon experience ‘the death of the reader’ as ‘machines creat[ed] slop for more machines.’”

The hubris Gogineni exhibited about AI replacing human authors is perhaps best exemplified in a tweet that appeared in testimony that if George R.R. Martin dies early “GPT can write the next [S]ong of [I]ce and [F]ire book.”…

(4) YOUR MULTIPLEX CAN’T WAIT FOR DECEMBER 18 TO ARRIVE. “Dunesday: will this be Barbenheimer on steroids – the biggest weekend of cinema ever?” asks the Guardian.

Name: Dunesday.

Age: Nascent.

Appearance: Barbenheimer, but less fun.

I’ve just arrived on this planet. Barbenheimer? The momentous day in July 2023 when Barbie and Oppenheimer were simultaneously released into cinemas worldwide.

And everyone picked sides? Or they saw both films on the same day, causing tonal whiplash from which they may still be recovering.

Fun times. And lucrative times, too. Barbie made $356m (£285m) worldwide on its opening weekend, while Oppenheimer shattered expectations by taking $180m. The £36m spent in UK cinemas that weekend made it the most successful since 2019, while it was the fourth-biggest box office weekend in the US ever.

So the Barbenheimer effect was real? Absolutely. For perhaps the first time, filmgoers en masse saw the dual releases of two blockbusters as complimentary, rather than a contest. Anyway, forget about Barbenheimer, because this December welcomes Dunesday, which will be Barbenheimer on steroids.

Two big films being released on the same day again? That’s right. This time, it’s Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three. Both come out on 18 December. It’s going to be huge!

I think I’ll pass. What? Why? Dune is the dramatic conclusion of an epic, skilfully told story that has so far made more than $1bn worldwide. Doomsday is the first Avengers film since 2019’s Endgame, which was for a time the biggest movie of all time….

(5) THE AVENGERS TURNS 65. TV Line reminds us, “65 Years Ago, A British Sci-Fi Spy Series Launched And Became A Global Hit”.

Two years before Marvel’s team of the same name debuted in the comics, the British espionage series “The Avengers” premiered, quickly establishing itself as one of the best TV shows of the 1960s. The cult spy-fi series made its bow in the United Kingdom 65 years ago, with its first episode, “Hot Snow,” beamed into households on January 7, 1961. It didn’t arrive in the States until 1966, when ABC picked it up, but once American viewers started watching it, they couldn’t get enough of “The Avengers.”

Created by Sydney Newman, a Canadian screenwriter who would go on to co-create “Doctor Who” in the next few years, “The Avengers” follows secret agent John Steed (Patrick Macnee) as he and a series of partners fight crime and go on elaborate spy adventures. Steed was actually intended as more of a sidekick to David H. Keel (Ian Hendry), a medical doctor who turned vigilante after witnessing his fiancée’s death, but he proved more popular with audiences and was retooled as the main character as a result.

While early seasons were relatively grounded, eventually “The Avengers” embraced more science fiction elements. The heroes used high-tech gadgets and fought robots or killer plants. Steed was joined by a series of female sidekicks over the course of the show’s six-season run, including anthropologist Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), martial arts expert Emma Peel (future Bond Girl and “Game of Thrones” star Diana Rigg), and spy Tara King (Linda Thorson)….

… “The Avengers” came to be known for its fashion almost as much as its action. John Steed wore a distinctive bowler hat and traditional but sharp suits, a style that’s been dubbed neo-Edwardian. This was all down to Patrick Macnee: Steed wore a trench coat to begin with, but the actor brought his own flair to the character, making him a wry spoof of a typical proper Englishman. “Steed is pretty much me,” he told TV News in 1967. “I feel I’m satirizing my own class.”

The women on the show, meanwhile, wore mod dresses, leather catsuits, and other avant-guard clothing. The catsuits (which were actually faux-leather because the real material was too restrictive for the hand-to-hand combat scenes) were initially a practical consideration. Dresses got in the way of the fighting Honor Blackman’s Cathy Gale did each episode, so designer Michael Whittaker was brought in to design the show’s catsuits and the rest is fashion history….

(6) DECADE’S BEST – SO FAR. CBR.com has rolled out its list of “10 Best Sci-Fi Novels of the 2020s, Ranked After the 2026 Hugo Awards”.In science fiction and fantasy, there is no award greater than the annual Hugo Award. Established in 1953 at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, it is the oldest and most prestigious international award for science fiction and fantasy literature — other than the Nebula Awards — and though it covers all forms of speculative and genre-bending fiction, the Hugo Award is considered sci-fi’s highest honor.

Indicating the best works from the previous year, they are nominated by members of the World Science Fiction Society across 17 categories, including Best Novel, Best Novella, and Best Series — one of the newest categories that was introduced in 2017 and was recently awarded to one of the best works of military sci-fi, John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War in 2026. Showcasing the best the genre has to offer, the Hugo Awards are the most trusted reading guide chosen by the fans for the fans.The list includes –

Death of the Author Uses a Book-Within-a-Book Structure

Published in 2025, Death of the Author is Nnedi Okorafor’s most recent novel. A finalist for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel, it is an Africanfuturist story with a metafictional narrative. It follows Zelu, a paraplegic Nigerian-American writer, whose life changes completely after she writes a breakout sci-fi masterpiece called “Rusted Robots.” The book alternates between Zelu’s real-world struggles, excerpts from Rusted Robots, and interview transcripts.

Praised for blurring the lines between sci-fi and literary metafiction, the novel is a deep character study with family drama and dystopian robot narratives. However, its hybridity means some pure sci-fi readers find it less traditional than standard genre fiction. Death of the Author has received critical acclaim for its in-depth exploration of disability, artificial intelligence, identity, autonomy, and how stories can reshape both the author and the world.

Nnedi Okorafor shared her reaction to being on the list with Facebook readers.

This is a cool list and has a bunch of books I am really pleased to be included with, and a few I needed to be reminded about.

Also, now that my novel’s been out for a while… it’s time to say this louder: DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a lot lot lot more than science fiction…unless my own life and family, what it is to be Nigerian American, and what it is to move through the world as a black woman with disabilities are all science fiction. In many ways, it is a “how to” novel about how to write africanfuturism, as well.

I wrote it the way it’s written because that’s how the story arrived. I thought I was writing two books at once when I wrote it. The whole “book within a book” thing was never on my mind when I wrote it. That’s something I started to hear after it was published. I’m a “pantser” (one who flies by the seat of her pants, no outlining) and I write nonlinearly. Structure does not guide me.

This novel is so many things that it is INDEED un-catagorizable if you taste and swallow it whole…yet I guess it’s easiest for people to reduce it to a category they know I like to play in because otherwise, where will you find it?, how will people describe it to friends so that they don’t feel stupid or silly?, how do you make it not a mouthful?, how do you refer to it?, what is it if it’s many things at once?

It should be ok to not know what to expect, to relax, trust, and let the story guide you. Submit to the story. Be quiet. Relinquish that control for a while. Especially in this day and age of social media.

Imagine it:

“What are you reading?”

“Actually…I don’t know. Let me just see where it goes and I’ll let you know later.”

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a Nnedi Novel, which means it’s many things all at once, some old, some new. That should be enough, imho. Alas.

(7) SHELFIES. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was Shelfies #103: Stephanie Feldman.

Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novels Saturnalia, a Locus Award finalist, and The Angel of Losses, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Great New Writers Selection, Crawford Fantasy Award winner, and Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalist. Her first story collection, The Night Parade and Other Stories, is forthcoming in October 2026, and her next novel, In Summer She Turns Cruel, will arrive in 2028. Read her short story “The Genius and the Devil” in the new anthology The Elements of Dark Academia. She’s online at stephaniefeldman.com, Bluesky, and Instagram.

(8) DYSON OR STAPLEDON? WonderDome Planetarium says “Let’s talk… Dyson Sphere and Intelligent Aliens”.

A Dyson sphere constructed by an advanced alien civilization is a staple ingredient of space science fiction: Star Wars, Star Trek, you name it. We humans could do with a Dyson sphere too. Just imaging… collecting 10³⁶ W of the Sun’s energy instead of 10¹⁷ W the Earth receives now! Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But wait, are you at a loss as to what we are talking about?

Dyson sphere is an idea, a mental experiment, named after a great American-British physicist Freeman Dyson. Strictly speaking, Freeman Dyson was not the first to come up with the concept. It was inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 science fiction novel “Star Maker” (you can download the book in pdf format here).

Dyson himself referred to the construction as “an artificial biosphere”. He disapproved of the widely used name “Dyson sphere” (thanks for that, SETI enthusiasts) and thought that “Stapledon’s sphere” would have been more appropriate….

…Many people imagine a Dyson Sphere as a solid hollow ball around a star. Well, that is wrong! If you want to build a Dyson Sphere, make it out of separate elements, such as solar panels, mirrors or similar, that either orbit your star or hover above its surface. (And if you are making a SOLID Dyson shell, please STOP. They are unstable and will not last long!)…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

September 21, 1912 — Chuck Jones. (Died 2002.)

By Paul Weimer: In talking about Chuck Jones, animator extraordinaire mainly known for his Warner Bros. characters, I have to dig in my brain for a question I had not actively thought of before: What was the first Warner Bros cartoon that I watched that featured one of his creations? This was not as easy a question as I thought. The list of his creations (or characters he helped create and develop) is long. Michigan J. Frog. The neurotic Claude the Cat. The large orange hairy monster Gossamer. The Wise guy Charlie the Dog.

But he’s much more well-known for helping develop Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. (Pepé may not have aged well in our modern sensibilities–let’s face it, a sex pest male Skunk is not funny.)

Bugs, Marvin, Wile E. and The Road Runner are classic characters. Bugs is the Trickster, Marvin is the put-upon martinet, Wile is the not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is and the Road Runner is also a form of the Trickster, but more benign in some ways. He really just does want to live his life, and it is the obsessive Coyote who interrupts it. I do love when the characters mix it up, such as when Bugs meets Wile E. And Marvin? I think his best short is not with his traditional adversary, Bugs, at all.

So thinking hard and long about it, the first Chuck Jones character that I remember seeing was most definitely a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Gossamer as the monster. It was also notable for having a mad scientist character who was basically a caricature of Peter Lorre. So, long before I saw Casablanca, or The Maltese Falcon, I saw Peter Lorre in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I had no idea who he was supposed to be, at the time, but now I find it weirdly wonderful that the animated Peter Lorre is as big, or bigger, than the actual actor.

But my favorite Chuck Jones character has to be, of course, Marvin the Martian. Forever trying to blow up the Earth because it obstructs his view of Venus, it would make him very very angry not to mention Duck Dodgers in the 24-and-1/2th Century, which may be the epitome of Daffy Duck’s animated career. Although I do enjoy his pairings and face-offs with Bugs, having Daffy face off against Marvin, with Porky Pig as his sidekick, is absolute genius (no wonder why Garibaldi of Babylon 5 loves it so).

Chuck Jones also directed the wonderful short film The Dot and the Line, which I mentioned in my Norton Juster birthday. It is one of the best animated short films I’ve ever seen and enchants me to this day.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ponders Sith names.
Barney and Clyde talk collectible comics.
Brevity defines a tendency.
Eyebeam knows the market.
FurBabies watch a Harryhausen flick.
Lio adds excitement.
Questionable Content gets into fandoms.
The Argyle Sweater stays the same.
The Other Coast reveals how some movies get made.

(11) PIKACHU FLOATS WHERE THE HUGO ONCE DID. “Pikachu in space! New ESA-Pokémon partnership sends the electric mouse to the ISS” – Space.com has the story.

Pikachu is one of Earth’s newest outer space ambassadors, thanks to a new partnership.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and The Pokémon Company International (TPCI) have teamed up to honor World Space Week 2026, which runs from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10.

To kick off this inaugural collaboration, a Pikachu toy floated aboard the International Space Station from April 11 to June 17, enjoying 67 days in orbit and completing 1,040 trips around our big blue marble. Pikachu joined seven human astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, who came up on SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission.

(12) BOLO FOR BLACK HOLES. “Large Hadron Collider is still on the hunt for short-lived quantum black holes and a theory of everything” at Space.com.

When we think about black holes, we tend to imagine dominant cosmic titans that consume everything around them. However, for many years scientists have mused over the existence of far more diminutive, but short-lived black holes. Using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, scientists have been on the hunt for quantum black holes that are smaller than atoms. This is a tricky proposition, as these black holes would have a lifetime as diminutive as their size.

The discovery of such objects could help solve some of the mysteries surrounding the structure of space and time, united as a four-dimensional entity called “spacetime.”

It could also help researchers develop a theory of quantum gravity that unites the thus far incompatible theories of general relativity, our best description of gravity, and quantum physics, the framework that describes the universe on scales smaller than atoms…

… Unfortunately, this search has thus far been fruitless, but that doesn’t mean that it has been useless. Null results in this case redefine the search parameters for these tiny black holes and help perfect methods that can be used to hunt for new particles beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.…

(13) TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE. “Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds”.

For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years.

The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades researchers have subscribed to the theory that there is a single progenitor cell early in development that gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.

The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together — a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

“We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain,” said Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.”

The findings were published in Nature Neuroscience Sept. 18. Loh is the senior author. Graduate students Carolyn “C” Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai are co-first authors of the research….

(14) JMS AND BRUCE BOXLEITNER. The Babylon 5 YouTube channel has posted a three-part conversation between showrunner J. Michael Straczynski and actor Bruce Boxleitner.

Bruce Boxleitner on Capt. John Sheridan’s Origin — Behind Babylon 5 with JMS

Bruce Boxleitner Remembers Castmates Andreas Katsulas and Mira Furlan — Behind Babylon 5 with JMS

Untold Stories from the Finale with Bruce Boxleitner — Behind Babylon 5 with JMS

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Paul Weimer, Juli Marr, 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 Dan’l.]

“Johnny Randall’s Body”: The Unknown Inspiration for Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who Sang”

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Mike Glyer

By Gary Westfahl: Anne McCaffrey’s 1961 story “The Ship Who Sang” was the first of five stories later assembled as The Ship Who Sang (1969). These stories related the space adventures of a woman named Helva who has had her brain implanted into a spaceship; she is noted for her fondness for singing as she journeys through space. The book led to several sequels and probably qualifies as one of the most popular series in twentieth-century science fiction. But I recently located a 1952 story that, I believe, inspired McCaffrey’s original story.

Jerome Bixby’s “Johnny Randall’s Body” was published in a place where no scholar could be expected to find it – issue number 5 of the comic book Fantastic Worlds, dated September, 1952, where it appeared as a two-page story. (Note: in those days, a comic book could qualify for a reduced mailing rate if it included two pages of text, leading to the regular inclusion of brief stories; later, letters columns fulfilled this requirement.) It is about a space pilot, Johnny Randall, who is involved in a terrible accident that destroys almost all of his body, leaving only the brain intact. Fortunately, a scientist, Doctor Alexander Farmer, specializes in transplanting brains into robotic bodies, and he contacts Johnny and offers to do the same for him. Still, Johnny’s friend laments that he will never be able to go into space again. When he is notified that the procedure is complete, the friend goes to see him, but he is surprised to see no robotic body, only a spaceship. But Farmer explains that the spaceship is Johnny, since Farmer has transplanted his brain into the spaceship, which has now become his body, totally under his control. Johnny then says hello and takes his friend for a ride, so the story has a happy ending, since Johnny now has a body that will again enable him to travel in space.

This story raises two questions. First, why was Bixby publishing a story in a comic book? Well, at the time, he was in New York City, working as a science fiction writer and the editor of Planet Stories and Jungle Stories, and that was also the home of Ned L. Pines, publisher of several science fiction magazines, including Startling Stories, and a few comic books, including Fantastic Worlds. Given their shared involvement in science fiction, and the fact that Bixby published a story in Startling Stories in 1952, they might have run into each other on several occasions. And he actually wrote two other text stories for Pines’s comics: “Sunke-Wakan,” a three-page Western text story in Indians, #5 (April, 1951), and “The Man Who Didn’t Know Venus,” a two-page text story in Lost Worlds, #5 (October 1952). (If you’re curious, Pines had the odd habit of beginning his comic book series with issue number 5.) So this was yet another way that the young Bixby was earning money as part of a career that is truly a bibliographer’s nightmare, since he went on to publish innumerable stories in many hard-to-track-down places.

The second question: could McCaffrey possibly have read the story? We know that McCaffrey lived in New York from 1948 to 1951, and then moved to New Jersey not too far away, so as an aspiring science fiction writer she might have visited editors in New York City a few times in an effort to personally sell her stories; perhaps one of the magazines she approached was Planet Stories, leading to a meeting with Bixby. (However, her first published story actually appeared in the October, 1953 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Science-Fiction Plus.) There was also a science fiction club in New York City, the Hydra Club, founded in 1947; its meetings were regularly attended by Bixby, and McCaffrey might have come as well. Also, as young writers eager to make connections with established professionals from various cities, both she and Bixby might have attended science fiction conventions, and there was one annual convention established in 1950, Disclave, that was held in Washington D.C., accessible to both of them, and they might have met there. If they did meet, Bixby might have described the contents of one of his recent stories and perhaps even gave McCaffrey the opportunity to read it. If not entirely plausible, then, it is at least possible that such an encounter occurred, and that McCaffrey, impressed by the idea behind the story, remembered it and later used it to write her own story.

The reasonable objection to all of this is that it is all speculation, and that it is equally possible that the similarities between Bixby’s story and McCaffrey’s story are entirely coincidental. It is also true that, aside from their shared central idea, there are significant differences between the two stories, as McCaffrey sets her story farther in the future, when the use of “brainships” is commonplace, her protagonist was a woman, she was injured from birth and never experienced life inside a human body, and in her travels she is always accompanied by a human “Scout,” unlike Johnny who goes by himself.

Yet there is one smoking gun that persuades me beyond a reasonable doubt that McCaffrey must have been aware of Bixby’s story when she wrote “The Ship Who Sang,” and that is the way that his story concludes:

Now Johnny’s back in space – out in the black and silver void that he loves so much. We said goodbye to him two weeks ago. Outfitted with tri-di cameras and a complete automatic laboratory, he’s on his way to Alpha Centauri to hunt for alien civilizations. It’ll take him thirty years to get there. But he’s got plenty of time …. Farmer says he’ll live for about twenty-thousand years in his new body.

When he left, he was singing.

I rest my case.

Note: the two pages of the story are available at these links:

Pixel Scroll 9/20/26 “Up And Away In My Beautiful Scroll” By The Pixels

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) STARS ALIGN FOR LUCAS MUSEUM DEBUT. “Lucas Museum Opens And Hollywood Showed Up” – Deadline takes attendance.

The force is still with him. In Mellody Hobson’s remarks at the Saturday night opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts, the event’s co-host shared her husband George Lucas‘ anxiety whether A-listers would show up.

“George kept saying, would this person come, do you think this person would come,” Hobson recalled during the ceremony in the lobby of the Los Angeles museum. “I said, they would all come, George.”

She was right — the opening night felt like the Sun Valley Conference, the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, the ESPYs and a political convention all rolled into one as CEOs, film and TV stars, marquee filmmakers and top California politicians all showed up for the occasion.

It was a momentous one — as Queen Latifah noted in her opening remarks, it is very rare that an art museum of this caliber opens in one’s lifetime.

“Met opened in 1872, I would have to be 150 years old,” she quipped, adding, “Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met, and Los Angeles has the Lucas museum.”…

… Lucas, Hobson and Queen Latifah were joined on stage by the event’s co-chairs Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Lewis Hamilton, Steven Spielberg, Pharrell Williams, JR and Julie Bell…

… The guest list featured buzzy celebrity pairings, including Lewis Hamilton and Kim Kardashian, who walked the red carpet separately but left together, as well as Katy Perry and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who browsed the galleries hand in hand. They were accompanied by the museum’s architect Ma Yansong, who, in his remarks on stage, corrected a popular misconception that the building is made to resemble a spaceship. It actually is modeled after a cloud. (Also at the opening was Perry’s ex-fiancé, Orlando Bloom.)

There were multi-generational pairs too, Meg Ryan came with her son Jack Quaid, Ron Howard with his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Tucker with his son Destin Christopher Tucker, Robert Rodriguez with his son Racer Rodriguez, and Camila Alves with her son Levi Alves McConaughey.

Samuel L. Jackson does a double take at the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Video: Nellie Andreeva/Deadline) pic.twitter.com/yJvmhuMgnk
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) September 20, 2026

Celebrity guests spotted taking in the exhibits also included Jon Batiste, who sat behind the piano to perform at the opening ceremony, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Francis Ford Coppola, Leonardo DiCaprio, Vin Diesel, Cynthia Erivo, Star Wars OGs Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill — who hung out in the large area dedicated to the franchise — Christopher Nolan, Frank Miller, David Oyelowo, Keke Palmer, Tyler Perry, Jon Favreau, Ludwig Göransson, Robert de Niro, Spike Lee, Woody Harrelson, Alicia Keys, Al Pacino, and Denis Villeneuve.

Also in attendance were Andy Garcia, Camila Cabello, Keegan-Michael Key, Jerry Bruckheimer, Eva Longoria, Chuck Lorre, Jon M. Chu, Emma Watson, Kerry Washington, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Frank Marshall & Kathleen Kennedy, Janelle Monáe, David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Edgar Wright, Nathan Fielder, Sofia Vergara, Takashi Murakami, Zac Posen, Lee Daniels, Law Roach, Helen Hunt, Tracee Ellis Ross, Doja Cat, Allyson Felix, Diane Warren, Magic Johnson, Lindsey Vonn, Flea, Cheech Marin, Judy Greer, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Wolfgang Puck…

… CEOs making an appearance included Disney’s Josh D’Amaro, YouTube’s Neal Mohan, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Snap’s Evan Spiegel, with D’Amaro’s predecessor Bob Iger, former Paramount Pictures CEO Jim Gianopulos and ex-Intescope CEO Jimmy Iovine also on hand….

(2) BSFS NEW BOARD. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society has elected their Board of Directors for 2026-2027. Chair Patti Kinlock says, “I appreciate the opportunity to once again serve as Board Chair, and I will do my best to honor your trust. The herding of cats goes on.”

President: Dale Arnold
Parliamentarian: John Robison
Treasurer: Maria Markham Thompson
Assistant (Balticon) Treasurer: Steven Joel Zeve
Recording Secretary: Michael Rafferty
Corresponding Secretary / Board Chair: Patti Kinlock
Publicity Coordinator: Kelly Shannon Pierce
Balticon Chair: Robert Markowitz
Balticon Vice-Chair: Josh “Yoshi” Perkoff
Directors at-Large: Megan Allen-Kingsland, Eric Gasior, Sam Lubell, Leona Thompson,

(3) INSIDE BASEBALL AT JEOPARDY! [Item by Mlex.] “Jeopardy! hides deep-cut Bluesky joke about ‘the slut gnomes of false Berlin’” – A.V. Club explains the story.

This is going to take some explaining: Back in 2023, a Bluesky user going by lowbeetle (who’s since apparently deleted their account, meaning this joke exists only in the screenshots and memories of others) made a post that quickly went viral, imagining the world’s weirdest Jeopardy! answer/question dyad: “Feel free to ask these diminutive spirits for sexual favors, but don’t say ‘guten Tag’—they’re not actually German!” (The response being, of course, “Who are the slut gnomes of false Berlin?”) It’s the kind of deliberately absurdist, hyper-specific online language—including an imaginary Alex Trebek calling said gnomes “bizarre little men,” in a parody of one of his classic, bemused asides—that you’d be forgiven for letting it lodge in your brain permanently. Which still makes it incredibly weird to see, on today’s episode of the series, the following pair of categories pop up in the game’s first round: “False Berlin,” followed immediately by “Bizarre Little Men.”

The culprit, it turns out, was host Ken Jennings, who is clearly a big fan of the concept of sexually available but diminutive pseudo-Teutons: Jennings wrote in his own Bluesky post today that “I don’t usually meddle on the writing side of Jeopardy!, but tonight I called in a favor for our Bluesky viewers.” So, there you have it: Online has finally, and fully, broken containment, in the most drastic way possible. The slut gnomes are free on the airwaves. All, we reckon, is lost.

— Ken Jennings (@kenjennings.bsky.social) 2026-09-19T03:13:57.635Z

(4) MORE JEOPARDY! CLUES. [Item by Andrew Porter.] Don’t know when the episodes that included these aired…

(5) ON WRITING A NON-SERIES SERIES. Alma Alexander has penned a guest essay at Genre Grapevine: “Oh, That Other World”. It begins —

Almost a quarter of a century ago I sat down and typed out a list of ten nameless characters with thumbnail characteristics – very cursory ones, at that, just bare, bare bones. I showed the list to my husband. He asked, “What is it?” I told him, “It’s my next novel.” He asked what it was about. I thought about it for a moment and then answered, honestly, “I don’t know.”

A couple of weeks after that I happened to notice an article online about a secret women’s language in China, which was basically dying out because the last user of it who had learned it traditionally and organically – at her mother’s knee – was now ancient, and dying, and after that the language would become something to be preserved in a museum. My list woke up; those characters sat up and rubbed their eyes and said, yes, that, that would be us. Do your research and write our story. The story turned out to be The Secrets of Jin Shei, written at white heat (200,000 words in less than 3 months), and a Blessed Book in every possible way.

My then-agent asked if there was a sequel. She kept on asking. In fact, she positively nagged. I kept on saying no until one day the answer suddenly changed, and turned into a yes, and a book (Embers of Heaven) set in the same world as that original novel but some 400 years later began to be born. I did a temporal weave, calling back to the earlier book – the earlier HISTORY, if you want – and although both books are very much standalones they are also intertwined in a deeply organic way, just like our own history hearkens back to earlier times.

Then I wrote a third historical fantasy, Empress. I moved the setting geographically AND temporally, but I was perhaps a little astonished to find myself referring to the milieu of the first two books in the fabric of the third.

That’s when it began to dawn on me that I was writing individual stories but I was also creating an entire alternate history of an entire parallel “other” world. It was a world that was rapidly becoming as real and familiar to me as my own reality was, and every new story in it was just another puzzle piece to be slotted into the big picture.

I did not specifically set out to do this, and neither did I invent it….

(6) EYES ON THE PRIZE. “This country is paying its people to read. Can it stop brain rot?” asks CNN.

Whether it’s while waiting for the train or chilling solo at a cafe, a tiny nation in Southeast Asia is nudging its people toward an increasingly elusive habit: reading.

Singapore this month launched a novel five-year national campaign to nurture reading habits, with incentives including small payments to citizens who log their reading minutes on a government website.

Officials are betting, the gamification strategy – using a points system to track the habit for a modest reward – and a sense of public participation can help to restore a habit being fast replaced by brain rot-inducing doomscrolling.

(7) THE MIGHTIEST B.O. ScreenRant chronicles “How Spider-Man: Brand New Day Beat Star Wars’ Box Office To Become America’s Highest-Grossing Movie Ever”.

The all-time domestic box office has a new champion thanks to Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios’ fourth solo movie for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man launched on July 31 to plenty of interest. It immediately started breaking records. The performance made it clear early on that Brand New Day was on track to become the highest-grossing movie ever in the United States.

Since 2015, that record has belonged to Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm and Disney’s relaunch of the Star Wars franchise was a phenomenon that united multiple generations of fans. The Force Awakens finished its theatrical run with $936.6 million domestically, easily taking the crown from James Cameron’s Avatar ($760.4 million at the time).

In the 11 years that have followed, no movie came that close to touching Star Wars‘ record. Avengers: Endgame finished nearly $80 million shy after its gigantic opening weekend. Holland’s last solo movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home, came up short by over $120 million despite having the same winter release window as The Force Awakens.

The record has now fallen, with Brand New Day becoming the highest-grossing domestic movie after making $936.77 million. It’s a title that the MCU movie seemed destined to take, but its path to it is quite notable, especially since Brand New Day still has time to increase its record total.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

September 20, 1979 — Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

Forty-seven years ago on this evening, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century first aired on NBC.

It is of course based on characters created by Philip Francis Nowlan. It started out as a comic strip that first appeared in daily U.S. newspapers on January 7, 1929, subsequently appearing in Sunday and international newspapers, then there were books, a radio adaption, comic books, a serial film. You get the idea.

Is there a museum dedicated to just him? If not, there should be!

So after all of that came this series. It was developed by Glen Larson who created Battlestar Galactica and Leslie Stevens who created Outer Limits.

It lasted but two seasons in total comprising thirty-seven episodes. A feature-length pilot episode for the series was released as a theatrical film, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

It did spectacularly well at the box office as it cost just three-and-a-half million and made eighteen point seven more than that!

The film was narrated as was the first season by William Conrad who had found stardom as a detective in the two series, Cannon and Nero Wolfe. Yes, he played Wolfe though briefly as it lasted but fourteen episodes. Who here saw him as Wolfe? I didn’t.

The only cast that counts was Gil Gerard as Captain William “Buck” Rogers and Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering. Oh, and Mel Blanc in the first season voicing Twiki. Felix Silva would voice him in the second season. No idea why the change in casting of Twiki’s voice as there’s nothing about it on the web.

Other cast members I’ll note are Tim O’Connor as Dr. Elias Huer, Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala and Henry Silva as Kane. Andrew Thom Christopher as Hawk, a bird man with the most comical feather for hair I’ve ever seen!

Later interviews with Gerard and Gray as well as the directors say that neither got along with the other as they thought each was getting more lines and better stories. Oh well.

Buster Crabbe who played Buck Rogers in the original thirties Buck Roger’s film serial would play Brigadier Gordon in an episode here. Yes, a nod to his other film series.

The casting director had a fondness for one of our favorite series. Many of the actors who had played villains in the Batman series guest-starred here such as Frank Gorshin, Roddy McDowall, Julie Newmar and Cesar Romero.

It’s worth noting that the series re-used most of the props, star fighters, stages, some of the effects film and even costumes from Battlestar Galactica. The network obviously being keen on keeping costs down at all costs.

Ratings were excellent enough for the first season to get a second season, but dropped drastically in that season and cancellation was decided by mid-season.

Most critics at least somewhat liked it and their feelings could be summed up by Joe Pollack of St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The best thing about the film is that neither director Daniel Haller nor his actors take themselves seriously, and the result is one of the more pleasant ways to spend some time.”

Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes sort of liked it giving it a score of 54%.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a different way of phrasing a task.
Brevity tries the Richmond Way out West.
FoxTrot went with the suggestion.
Non Sequitur needs something else to wash ashore.
Rhymes with Orange has layers.
Wumo refuses to be saved.
Non Sequitur explains the animated Kong.

(10) ANGELS IN AMERICA. Collider tells why “HBO’s Most Ambitious Miniseries Is Still One of the Best Ever Made 23 Years Later”.

In 1993, the play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes premiered on Broadway. Created by Tony Kushner, whose screenwriting collaborations with Steven Spielberg include Lincoln, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans, it’s a play that follows the lives of those in New York City during the late 1980s, in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, which blossomed into an epic of quite literally biblical proportions. The experiences and affairs of a dying prophet, an unhappy couple, an arrogant prosecutor, and all those who surround them collide as a new era begins. Angels in America was a special moment in the theatrical world. Part 1: Millennium Approaches alone won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards, along with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It never fails to receive a trophy when it’s revived for the stage, with Kushner solidifying himself and his work in the canon of legendary playwrights.

It should come as no surprise that, ten years later, the play was adapted — but not to the big screen, like many famous plays before and after it. In 2003, HBO released Angels in America as a limited series, which became one of the greatest examples of storytelling put on screen. More than two decades later, its cast still looks almost absurdly stacked, with Patrick Wilson in a career-best role as the closeted Joe Pitt, and Jeffrey Wright returning to the part he played on Broadway. There are some smaller actors you’ve probably never heard of, including Al Pacino as real-life conservative figure Roy Cohn, Meryl Streep as Joe’s mother, and Emma Thompson as the Angel of America herself. The series became one of television’s biggest awards successes and is still regarded as one of the best portrayals of the AIDS crisis put on the screen.

For those who have sat through all seven or so hours of the original play, both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, you’d know that there is a lot to cover: conflicts both personal and existential, cheating lovers, debating the almighty, living with dying, hallucinations, Mormons, and Ethel Rosenburg. According to The Essential HBO Reader, bringing this film to the screen was a process that lasted over a decade, with executive producer Cary Brokaw campaigning for an adaptation even before the play went to Broadway….

(11) TILE TITAN. “The Largest Roman Mosaic Ever Excavated Opens to the Public” at Colossal.

At 33 feet wide and 52.5 feet high, an ancient mosaic recently unveiled to the public may be the largest in the entire Roman world. It sits within the recently opened Museum of the Baths of Trajan in central Rome, which preserves a monumental, early 2nd-century bath complex built by Emperor Trajan covering about 15 acres.

To construct the baths on the Oppian Hill, builders repurposed elements of a previous structure, Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea, or “Golden House,” originally erected between 64 and 68 C.E. It’s unclear if the mosaic originated in that building; archaeologists think it could have also been part of a lavish dwelling that was later incorporated into the compound. But many of the monumental composition’s tesserae are missing and may have been used in the construction of the baths.Dubbed the “Great Mosaic,” the work was discovered in 2011, and archaeologists have been meticulously revealing and conserving it since. The in situ artwork depicts architectural features that may represent a dual-level theatrical set, known as a scaenae frons, plus statues of the Muses and other figures and patterns that mimic the appearance of marble….

(12) T.REX TRACKS. [Item by Kathy Sullivan.] “These Four Giant Dinosaur Footprints Discovered in North Dakota Might Represent the First Trackway Made by an Adult T. Rex Ever Found” reports Smithsonian.

… Hups was convinced he’d discovered a T. rex footprint. But when he let Lyson know what he’d found, the paleontologist was more skeptical. Only two adult T. rex tracks had ever been uncovered—one in New Mexico and the other in Montana.

Still, the team returned to the site the next day, where they were shocked to discover several additional footprints—a trackway measuring roughly 23 feet long featuring two left and two right footprints, each around three feet long. Based on the stride lengths and foot lengths, researchers estimate the T. rex was walking at a speed of roughly 3.4 to 4.5 miles per hour. One footprint even appears to have an impression of a T. rex claw….

… The researchers are convinced the footprints were made by a T. rex because of their size, shape and location. Numerous T. rex bones have been found in the same area, encased in 66- to 68-million-year-old geologic layers collectively known as the Hell Creek Formation, which spans eastern Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming. Finds include Sue, one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons ever discovered, and “Teen Rex,” the juvenile dinosaur discovered by three children in 2022. Gus, the T. rex fossil that sold for a record $50.1 million earlier this year, and Stan, which sold for $31.8 million in 2020 and is now on display at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, were also found nearby….

(13) STONY END. “Who Owns This Chunk of Mars? Jeanine Pirro Says America Does Now” – the New York Times has details.

When a huge chunk of Mars was sold to an anonymous bidder for $5.3 million, Sotheby’s celebrated it as the most valuable meteorite ever auctioned.

Then, a chorus of government officials and international meteorite hunters began asking questions about the provenance of the space debris and how the deal had come together.

At the time of the July 2025 auction, Sotheby’s said the 54-pound rock — the largest meteorite from Mars ever found — was discovered in 2023 in the deserts of Niger in West Africa. But after the sale, the Niger government opened an investigation into whether the auction house had violated the country’s 1997 law safeguarding natural heritage.

Sotheby’s paused the finalization of the sale to review the concerns, Natasha Le Bel, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman, told The New York Times last week.

This summer, federal agents seized the meteorite from Sotheby’s, saying that whoever brought it into the United States had violated the law by not declaring it to customs.

Then, Jeanine Pirro got involved.

“The truth is that we don’t know who owns it,” Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a former Fox News personality, said in a social media video this month, leaning over the rock in a conference room. “So we own it now.”

Customs has no recording of it ever coming into the United States, Pirro said, adding that it was caught up in a “corrupt deal.”

In promoting the sale back in 2025, a Sotheby’s executive named Cassandra Hatton said that an anonymous seller flew to the desert in Niger after getting a call about the discovery from a meteorite hunter.

“It caused quite a stir,” Ms. Hatton said in a 2025 interview with Reuters, describing an intense effort to remove it from Niger.

Some meteorite hunters questioned how that could be possible.

Niger in 2023 was in the throes of political instability, which culminated in a summer coup d’état. It would have been difficult for a foreigner to head into the most remote reaches of the country’s northern deserts.

Three meteorite hunters, who requested anonymity to discuss a private business deal, said the rock was actually found in southern Algeria by a Bedouin man who later sold it to a Moroccan dealer. They said that dealer eventually decided to reclassify the specimen as originating from Niger to avoid an Algerian law banning the trade of meteorites found within its borders.

Enter a self-described collector of the impossible named Luca Cableri. He was accused in 2012 of being connected to the Girolamini Library theft, one of Europe’s largest historical book heists. Sometime after that, according to two officials familiar with the matter, he became involved with meteorite sales and was looking to broker a sale for the Martian rock.

“The gallery I represent purchased the meteorite from an international business company and then sold it to a private individual,” Mr. Cableri said in a statement to The New York Times on Friday, adding that he has not received a final criminal conviction in the library theft case. “After the sale, I am unaware — and it could not be otherwise — of what this private citizen may have done with the meteorite sold.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mlex, Patti Kinlock, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

Bjo Helps Dedicate Galileo Shuttle’s New Home

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Seated: Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Bjo Trimble.

Bjo Trimble joined several Trek cast members at Trekonderoga Weekend to christen the USS Galileo’s new home at the Star Trek Tour Set in Ticonderoga, NY. She broke the bottle on the ship moments after this picture was taken.

Center: George Takei and Bjo Trimble talk to David Gerrold, at right. Takei’s husband Brad Altman at left.)

A Kickstarter – “Land The Shuttlecraft Galileo” – raised over $300,000 to build a Landing Bay to display the original, restored Shuttle next to the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga.

Constructed by the Aluminum Model Toys corporation (AMT) in 1967. The Galileo has been on quite a journey: Though three TV seasons on the original Star Trek.

The Shuttle was nearly tossed out, and was parked outdoors in an RV lot, only then to be saved and restored by caring fans Adam & Leslie Schneider.

She premiered at NASA’s Houston Space Center. Her next flight was through the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid.

SHIP OF THESEUS. File 770 began following efforts to save the shuttle with our 2012 post “In Space, No One Can Hear You Rot”.

What remains of the shuttlecraft Galileo, a prop from the original Star Trek series, sold in June for the incredible price of $70,000. Astonishing might be a better word, given its condition after being left outdoors in the rain.

The Galileo is constructed of plywood (you were expecting titanium?). It’s wedge-shaped, 24 feet long, 9 feet wide at the front, 14 feet wide at the tail, and 9 feet high. And empty as a barn.

Since the Sixties Galileo has had several owners. This video history [YouTube] says it was once displayed at Creation Cons. Later, the Galileo was acquired by fans with plans to do a full restoration. They hauled it from Palm Springs to Akron, Ohio and went to work in the spring of 1991. But they didn’t finish. Disappointed owner Lynn Miller writes, “We have spent over $100,000 over the years to store and restore this thing. Anyone that I hired let me down and each time I got something accomplished it was ruined by incompetent people I hired.” Especially the contractor who stored it outside.

WITH GOOD INTENTIONS. The “Shuttlecraft Galileo Restoration” story almost came to an abrupt end in 2012.

After Adam Schneider and Alec Peters paid $70,000 for the decaying remains of Star Trek’s Shuttlecraft Galileo they wasted no time getting the relic into the hands of restoration specialists. Ironically, moving the 24-foot-long set piece to Master Shipwrights’ New Jersey worksite nearly put an end to it.

The Galileo arrived at the firm’s Monmouth County, New Jersey facility in time to face destruction by Hurricane Sandy. Master Shipwrights was flooded with two feet of water. “Fortunately, Galileo was up on a trailer and was unaffected!” writes Alec Peters. “How terrible would it have been to make it through 45 years of travel and neglect to suffer a dismal fate in a hurricane?”

When the Galileo had been fully restored, it went on display in 2013 at Space Center Houston, the visitor’s center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

IF YOU CAN MAKE IT HERE, YOU CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE. In 2016, Galileo was loaned to the Intrepid Museum in New York City, where it was placed on display alongside the Space Shuttle Enterprise

Courtesy of NASA’s Space Center Houston, the Galileo is finally coming in for a landing in Ticonderoga, NY.

Pixel Scroll 9/19/26 The Eggplant Emoji That Ate Chicago

Posted on September 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) BAEN PICKS DRAKE AWARD JUDGES. Baen Books has announced the guest judges for the inaugural David A. Drake Memorial Award for unpublished short stories. Submissions for the award will open September 24.

Two science fiction luminaries who were close friends with David Drake will serve as guest judges for the inaugural round of its newest short story award, the David A. Drake Memorial Award.

New York Times best-selling author David Weber and editor, author, and anthologist Bill Fawcett will serve as the first guest judges for the award. Weber, best known for the Honor Harrington series, together with David Drake and Jerry Pournelle, helped establish the entire field of military science fiction. Fawcett, a longtime game designer, book packager, and author of military SF and nonfiction, edited the six-volume The Fleet anthology series and its follow-on Battlestation anthology with Drake. Baen is confident Weber and Fawcett will help Baen’s editors select stories that reflect the legacy of David Drake’s groundbreaking fiction.

Award submissions of original, unpublished short stories of up to 8,000 words will be accepted starting 24 September 2026. The contest is open to all forms of science fiction and fantasy, and Baen will be looking for works of great science fiction or fantasy with strong military themes central to the characters and plot. Authors do not have to be veterans or active military members to participate, but veterans and those in the military are encouraged to submit. Details of the submission process may be found on the Baen Books website

Submissions will remain open through 10 December 2026, and will be judged blindly by a panel consisting of Baen Books editors as well as guest judges Weber and Fawcett. Baen Books plans to announce the finalists in February 2027 and present the award in June at Baen Books’ Traveling Roadshow at the LibertyCon science fiction and fantasy convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

David Drake in 1994. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(2) SANDERSON SPEAKS ABOUT UNFINISHED GRRM SERIES. “Brandon Sanderson Defends George R.R. Martin, Wouldn’t Finish ASOIAF” reports Nerdist.

I’ve stopped worrying if George R.R. Martin will ever finish The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring and started worrying about the author himself. He shared some very serious mental health struggles in a recent “Not a Blog”. It followed other public comments about his many frustrations. Not all of his fans are exactly gracious about the possibility he will never finish A Song of Ice and Fire. But one very famous fan certainly is giving Martin some grace. Fellow author Brandon Sanderson defended the man he calls “the great patriarch of the fantasy genre” by explaining that writing is an art and not a trade. He also called for understanding for the struggles that come with the craft while also saying even if he were asked he would never finish Martin’s story.

During an interview with IGN, Sanderson shared his thoughts on one of the biggest topics in literature, George R.R. Martin’s incomplete novel series. When asked if he any sympathy for the man who created Westeros, Sanderson said, “Absolutely.” He then offered some platitudes about Martin’s kindness and over-sized role in the fantasy realm before imploring others to also understand the difficulty Martin faces. His words are worth seeing in full:

“At the same time, writing can be a lonely profession, and we all know the difficulty of a book that just WILL NOT work. I’ve been fortunate that books like that have always been side projects for me, ones I can abandon without it causing too many ripples in my career. The only thing that will lead to A Song of Ice and Fire being finished is our support, patience, and effort to remember what makes books special: the fact that they are one of the few mass media art forms that are still largely created by individual human beings.”

Sanderson also addressed whether he would ever finish A Song of Ice and Fire as he did with Wheel of Time. “Respectfully, I’m the wrong person to do this – and I think most fans of both of our works would agree,” he said. He then added if he were to do it he’d try to make it as much like Martin as possible, but ultimately he wouldn’t because there are “much more natural fits out there” for the task. Not that it matters. Martin has previously said if he dies before he finishes, the series it will remain unfinished.

That’s fine with Sanderson. He says no one “owes” anyone a book because that’s not how it works. All anyone, including both him and Martin, “owe” readers is their best effort. But you can’t force a story because writing is not a job. As Sanderson notes, “It’s an art, much like making music… and sometimes, you lose that music.”…

(3) EKPEKI NOVEL COVER REVEAL. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has invited File 770 to share the cover reveal of his debut novel Birth of Orisha, forthcoming next February from Caezik Books, an imprint of Arc Manor.

Open Country Mag scored the original cover reveal:

Birth of Orisha [is] the first book in his planned Orisha Cycle trilogy…. The novel, which expands on his award-winning novella Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon, is scheduled for publication on 16 February 2027, during Black History Month.

The cover is illustrated by John Jennings, the New York Times bestselling artist, writer, scholar, and recipient of the Hugo, Eisner, and NAACP Image awards. Jennings is also a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and the founder of Megascope, a graphic novel imprint at Abrams ComicArts. His work includes adaptations of Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Parable of the Sower, created alongside Damian Duffy.

Set in the near-far future, Birth of Orisha imagines an Africa devastated by nuclear war, where nearly all life has been destroyed. The people of Ife-Iyoku, formerly Ile-Ife, the birthplace of all life, are protected and transformed by the power of the place, evolving and gaining powers to survive. The place is protected and ringed by the forest of fears, which holds the radiation from reaching them, but also keeps them trapped in and separated from the rest of the world which has abandoned and forgotten them, as they begin to die out.

The novel develops the world first introduced in Ekpeki’s Ife-Iyoku, The Tale of Imadeyunuagbon, a novella that earned nominations for the Nebula, BSFA, and Sturgeon awards and won the Otherwise and Nommo awards. Birth of Orisha is the first of three planned books, followed by War of Orisha and Death of Orisha….

(4) CAN A B-MOVIE BE GREAT? ALLEGEDLY, YES. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] Kim Newman drew up a list of “10 great sci-fi B-movies” for the British Film Institute.

Because SF films require expensive special effects and SF literature involves challenging ideas, A-picture science fiction was historically a rare strain – carried by Metropolis (1927), Things to Come (1936), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982): philosophical spectacles, steeped in awe and anxiety.

On the lower half of those bills – or put out in double (or triple) features, mainstays of low-prestige distribution via drive-in, grindhouse, cassette rental or streaming – are science fiction B-pictures. Cheaper, faster, often scurrilous, impatient with messages (or prone to overdo the editorial), these films are easy to ridicule for dramatic or technical imperfections (and scientific illiteracy – as often found in A-picture sci-fi as in the land of the Bs). Indeed, some Bs are as prized for their failings as admired for their modest achievements.

If you can’t afford a trip to space, have the alien visit economy class – by teleportation or plastic plate UFO. If the city-stamping Godzilla is beyond the budget, go with smaller fuzzy-felt mutants or even invisible monsters. The B jungle is populated by lumbering robots, alien sexual predators, time travellers cutting a swathe through the present day and old-school monsters (vampires) repurposed for the atomic age….

This hall of dubious fame includes:

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

“She’ll tear up the whole town until she finds Harry.”

“Yeah, then she’ll tear up Harry.”

The A feature The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) inspired the cheapo B The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), which in turn prompted this delirious mix of noir melodrama and shoddy spectacle. A neurotic millionaire (Allison Hayes) is being tormented by her worthless husband (William Hudson), who is running around with one of the great floozies of 50s cinema, rock’n’roll vamp Yvette Vickers. An alien giant from a ‘satellite’ (in 1958, thanks to Sputnik, flying saucers were temporarily out of fashion) uses her famous diamond necklace to power his spaceship and gifts/curses her with gigantism in return.

Statuesque Hayes lives up to the iconic poster image when she bursts out of her house for a last-reel rampage. Even if the effects aren’t up to par, the final image of the electrocuted giantess clutching her doll-sized cheating husband is pulp perfection.

(5) SAVING WASHINGTON D.C. Henry Lien invites everyone to “Come watch me use my sexy kung-fu poverty monk skills to defend the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building from an extinction-level event while talking about Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird” on September 24. Click here for (free) tickets. “Live! At the Library: The Beauty of Eastern Storytelling with Henry Lien”.

(6) BABYLON 5 COMES TO YOUTUBE. J. Michael Straczynski told followers on X.com — “A while ago I mentioned that Bruce Boxleitner and I were helping Warners with the launch of their Babylon 5 YouTube channel. As part of that, the first of three brand new half-hour-plus interviews/discussions between me and Bruce will go online on Monday” [September 21].

The YouTube channel is here: Babylon 5.

Straczynski’s one-minute welcome video includes the amusing line: “For many years there has been no place for B5 fans to congregate other than the occasional asylum or prisons…”

(7) CHARLES MOHAPEL OBITUARY. Charles Mohapel died September 18 reports a fellow Canadian fan. Mohapel was a prolific photographer of conventions and other fannish events. He was an Aurora Award nominee in 1998 for Fan Achievement (Other).

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

September 19, 1922 — Damon Knight. (Died 2002.)

By Paul Weimer: What can I say about the man the SFWA Grand Master Award is named for? Member of the Futurians of New York city, for openers, there where the Deep Magic was written, one might say.

One can talk about his extensive genre criticism, a model and a role model for genre critics in the field ever since. In Search of Wonder, his first collection of essays, collects the essays that earned Knight a Hugo in 1956 for “Best Book Reviewer”. (Fan Writer as a category would not exist until over a decade later). Creating Short Fiction, although perhaps dated today, was a book about the craft of writing short fiction. He was an editor of the twelve series of Orbit anthologies, which published original stories from people ranging from Le Guin and Russ to Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, and Norman Spinrad (whose story, “The Big Flash” which won him a Hugo award for Best Novelette)

Or one can talk about this extensive body of fiction. While he wrote a fair sheaf of novels, his short fiction is where he excelled. And honestly, in this day and age, it’s the easiest and best way to get into his work (as noted above, Short Stories was his thing) He wrote in an era of twist and zinger endings that really pack a punch, sometimes with a sledgehammer and sometimes with a scalpel. The Devil getting outfoxed in “The Last Word”. “Not with a Bang” features a really nasty protagonist, possibly the last man on a devastated Earth, who is undone by his would-be wife’s prudishness.

And oh yes, people outside the genre might not know of his work in criticism or the fact that his name is on the Grand Master Award, or just about any of his extensive short fiction…except for one more story to mention. It’s a story everyone knows. Enough rebroadcasts of The Twilight Zone have ensured that, and so will six more words, as Knight came up with the definitive twist ending for the series (no surprise given the above) but this story is the gold standard:

“To serve man…it’s a cookbook!”

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Crankshaft’s Holtron the computer quotes Harlan Ellison.
Brevity has doubts about the software.
Dinosaur Comics details the failings of Sherlock Holmes, baker.
Off the Mark unleashed a pedant.
Strange Brew doubles clowns’ vocabulary.

(10) SETTING RECORDS. [Item by Steven French.] Stephen King tells The Paris Review about the big band sound of Glen Miller after this detour into rock: “On the ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ by Stephen King”.

I was a bop kid from the start. When Eric Carmen, the talented lead singer of the Raspberries, wrote “I’m a rocker, I’m a roller / I’ve been a-boogieing since I ditched the stroller,” he might have been talking about me. I can clearly remember my first record, a seventy-eight rpm. It was Elvis singing “Don’t Be Cruel.” (B-side was “Hound Dog.”) Later I graduated to forty-fives and bought Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” for seventy-eight cents. (B-side: “Around and Around.”) My mother—not exactly racist but very much a woman of her time—asked me if Mr. Berry was white. Fearing my precious record might be taken away (I was ten), I assured her he was.

Just lately, though, I have become fascinated by the so-called big bands on the SiriusXM station called “40s Junction.” I guess this sort of music is called, for want of a better word, jazz, but it’s totally unlike Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, or Sonny Rollins. My collaborator on three books, Peter Straub, was a total jazz freak, and I did him the courtesy of listening, but the music always made me feel like I had a low-grade case of the flu….

(11) RESIDENT EVIL DIRECTOR NOT PREPARED FOR FAN BACKLASH. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The film is in cinemas this week but the BBC notes that the director has had a rough time from fan response…

in the lead-up to the film’s release, Cregger’s spent a lot of time defending himself against complaints he’s cashing in on the Resident Evil name.

When the first trailer appeared online, many users swamped comment sections to complain about what they’d seen.

Where were the beloved characters? The familiar monsters?

Cregger says he had little interest in simply retelling the story of the Resident Evil games, but that didn’t seem to calm some fans.

Trailer here or below

(12) FIRE IN SPACE. The May issue of ASFACTS gave highlights of space history author Loretta Hall’s talk to an Albuquerque SF Society meeting.

Thirty-Four people were in attendance for the Bubonicon 56 report and a presentation on fire in space from Loretta Hall….

…Loretta Hall noted in her introduction that she searched for movies with fire in space, and only found one – Gravity (2013). “But the fire around Sandra Bullock doesn’t act like fire would in micro-gravity.”

She said the Apollo 1 fire was tragic, especially with one hundred percent flammable coolant. Apollo 13 showed fire could happen in space. And on the Mir Space Station in 1997, a Russian cosmonaut saw a flame just before the alarm sounded and the cabin filled with smoke. The fire burnt itself out in 14 minutes when the fuel source was exhausted, and cosmonauts had to wear respirators for a couple of days afterward because of smoke particles floating in the station.

Hall said that experiments on fire’s nature and behavior were done on Salyut, Mir, the space shuttle, parabolic airplane flights, the International Space Station, and the Cygnus cargo vehicle.

“Fire is a chemical reaction that requires heat, oxygen and fuel in the right proportions,” she said. “In space, there is no air movement like on Earth where heated air rises and cooler air comes from beneath. On Earth, flames extend upward as hot air rises. But in micro-gravity, flame is more rounded and cooler, burning blue. And electrical fires behave much differently in space.”

Detection issues are more difficult in space, she noted. There often is overheating and smoldering, but not flames. Smoke hovers in non-ventilated areas, and smoke particle sizes can vary.

“Using a fire extinguisher in micro-gravity can be tricky,” Hall reported. To extinguish, astronauts have to turn off the ventilation to affected module, remove electricity from affected hardware, try using a fire extinguisher, and powering down the module.

“Fire in a space station most likely would be a slow burn that would fill it with thick smoke,” she concluded. “Scientists still are trying to understand the mechanics of fire’s behavior in space.”

(13) TODAY’S SCROLL TITLE EXPLAINED. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Backstory/Origin/Inspiration for the title “The Eggplant Emoji That Ate Chicago” comes via the song “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago” by Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band ‎(I may even still have the 45, I certainly remember hearing the song).

Video of the song

According to the song’s Wikipedia page (what a world we live in!) — “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago”:

“The Eggplant That Ate Chicago” is a song about alien invasion by Dr. West’s Medicine Show and Junk Band. Its author, Norman Greenbaum, later wrote and performed “Spirit in the Sky” to greater chart success.[3] It was re released on Dr. Demento Presents: The Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume III: The 1960s in 1985.

Dern notes, and here I was under the impression that Greenbaum only had that one hit song, which, since Eggplant was done by a band, that’s correct, technically. BTW, check out Greenbaum’s Wiki page (link via the above Eggplant URL)

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Joel Zakem, Bruce D. Arthurs, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Behold Peach Momoko’s Latest Vision Of The Marvel Universe In New Momo-Tone Variant Covers

Posted on September 19, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Peach Momoko continues to redefine her artistry! This November, the visionary artist debuts Momo-Tone Variant Covers, an all-new variant collection that showcases a bold new technique for the best-selling cover artist. In these gorgeously painted pieces, Momoko utilized screentones, adhesive sheets traditionally used in manga to create dynamic shades of gray and dramatic shadows. The result is a striking collection of dramatic portraits of Marvel icons unlike anything Momoko has created before, while still remaining true to her unmistakable signature style.

When asked about the project, Momoko shared, “When I was in school, I always wanted to use screentones for my artwork, but they were too expensive for me to afford. Now I have the opportunity and decided to challenge myself by using screentones for these new Marvel covers.”

“But an obstacle emerged,” Momoko explained. “How to color using watercolor paint on these screentones? So instead of painting on top of the screentones (risking the art warping), I tried and found that painting on the back of the canvas was very effective! It created a very clean, soft tone color palette that comes through the painting when light passes through from behind. I always enjoy these trial and error challenges and discovering the best methods of painting.”

Check out the first eight covers following the jump, and look out for more to be revealed in the weeks ahead.

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 9/18/26 File The Dishes And Scroll The Plates, That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates

Posted on September 18, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) A SECOND OPINION. Yesterday’s Scroll included the BBC’s “Invitation to Tender: Doctor Who”. Filers might also like to hear what David Tennant said about the matter on his Facebook page.

Big news from the Whoniverse today… the next era of Doctor Who is officially taking shape and will return in 2028.

The BBC has now formally opened the competitive tender process for the future of the series, inviting production companies to pitch for a new multi-episode run , including specials, intended for transmission in 2028/29, with the option for the BBC to extend the contract for a second series.

And the brief gives us a fascinating idea of what the BBC wants from the next incarnation of the show.

The new series should feel “contemporary and creatively ambitious”, balancing big science-fiction ideas with strong emotional storytelling, character and human experience. There should still be plenty of extraordinary times and places, from history and contemporary Earth to distant futures and alien worlds alongside jeopardy, tension and those classic “back of the sofa” scares, while remaining suitable for a broad family audience.

Perhaps most importantly, the BBC is encouraging whoever takes over to embrace everything Doctor Who can be, ending its invitation to prospective producers with a wonderfully Doctor-ish instruction:

“Be brave, have fun.”

Initial submissions close at 2pm on 2 October 2026, with the process currently expected to conclude with the successful producer being chosen in March 2027.

Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf are departing the series, and the previously announced 2026 Christmas special will not go ahead as the BBC instead focuses its investment on Doctor Who’s longer-term future.

So there may be a wait before that familiar blue box lands again, but the BBC’s plans now make one thing very clear:

Doctor Who is coming back. And a whole new era awaits!

(2) EGRESS FROM PROGRESS. Anastasia Klimchynskaya warns readers about “Misunderstanding the Genius of Jules Verne — And Why It Matters to Science Fiction” at Reactor.

… Verne has often been seen as the prophet of things to come—specifically, of numerous technological innovations: in addition to the moonshot, he’s been credited with inspiring the electrical submarine and the helicopter, among others. In his day, contemporaries praised his “divinatory prescience” and celebrated the “numerous prophecies offered by this inimitable entertainer, and which have realized themselves.” Verne is thus a particularly glaring example of a larger tendency around how we talk about science fiction, both among SFF fans and the “laypersons” who only have a passing knowledge of the genre: the idea that science fiction predicts technologies and innovations, which are then made into reality—for example, this chart of “Every Time Science Fiction Became Science Fact” featured on Gizmodo… one of many such….

… But what assumptions are baked into our conversations about science fiction coming true? And what are we overlooking when we over-focus on the gadgets sci-fi “predicted,” as these charts and memes and discussions tend to do? This is worth interrogating—and the way we discuss the work of Jules Verne, and the prescience of his science fiction, is particularly elucidating in that respect….

… But a belief in inevitable progress makes us forget to ask some important questions, such as: Are we actually meaningfully improving upon what has come before with every passing year? Is every new technology we invent a product of an inevitable “law of Progress,” or is “progress” just convenient rhetoric to justify developments such as, say, AI data centers that guzzle more water than small countries? …Because “that’s the cost of Progress” and you can’t stop progress?

The character of Michel Ardan, for example, is a somewhat ridiculous dreamer, which prompts the question: Should we actually take his word for it about inevitable progress? Ardan’s quote may well not reflect the beliefs of Verne himself, whose first (unpublished) novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century, offers a dystopian vision of the future in which technology and a profit-driven society have destroyed art and humanity. In fact, it may well be that From the Earth to the Moon is a satire, with its portrayal of a belligerent Baltimore Gun Club engaging in the purportedly scientific “experiment” of firing a cannon at the moon in order to become “the Columbuses of a new world.” Was Verne valorizing a violent and conquest-driven vision of science—or critiquing it?…

(3) SPACE WEAPONS. [Item by Steven French.] Sadly, not surprising: “The U.S. has weapons in space. Here’s what that could mean” at Science News.

Since the dawn of the Space Age, the weaponization of space has been an international concern. Now the United States has announced, with few details, that it has weapons in orbit.

“The United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending … against hostile adversary action,” U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said September 14 at the 2026 Air and Space Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.

With such limited information, it’s hard to know what to make of the announcement. But “the world should be listening with open ears about this information because of the wide range of consequences,” says astrodynamicist Thomas González Roberts of Georgia Tech in Atlanta….

(4) FLORIDA CENSORSHIP BACKLASH LEADS TO SCHOOL BOARD TURNOVER. “No more book bans: how Florida students are pushing rightwingers out of school boards” – the Guardian has the story.

Jimmy Glover’s youngest children were in high school when he noticed their Florida school district taking an unsettling turn. Beloved books were being pulled from shelves. Teachers were scared of being targeted.

“There was this culture of fear that was permeating throughout the district,” Glover said of Sarasota county.

By channeling anger against mask mandates in schools, the rightwing group Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida, built an outsized influence on school boards across the country in 2022. Soon, members began pressuring schools to remake their curricula along conservative ideological lines, erasing mentions of LGBTQ+ Americans, slavery, racism and more.

As a Black dad living in a historically Black part of Sarasota, Glover said he was especially disturbed by governor Ron DeSantis’s announcement that Florida schools would begin teaching students that some Black people benefited from slavery. “Now my children and the students in my community weren’t going to be learning about the true history of this country,” Glover said.

So the father of four decided to run for Sarasota’s school board this year. He is part of a larger movement of students, parents, teachers and concerned community members pushing back against the influence of groups like Moms for Liberty in Florida public education. They wanted schools that were safe and welcoming for all students, and that focused on learning rather than scoring points on the national political scene.

And last month, they won.

Progressive candidates beat opponents backed by or aligned with Moms for Liberty in school board races across the state – in many cases reversing gains made by the group in 2022. Of the 30 candidates the group supported that year, 20 have declined to seek re-election, have been defeated or will face runoffs in November, according to the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida.

In Sarasota, home to Moms for Liberty’s cofounder Bridget Ziegler, progressives flipped the school board, with liberal candidates Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry replacing more conservative members (school board races in Florida are technically nonpartisan). Glover got more votes than either of his conservative opponents, but his race will go to a runoff in November since no candidate won a majority….

(5) WALLIAMS CANCELED. “David Walliams’s back catalogue dropped by book publisher HarperCollins” reports The Independent.

HarperCollins is set to phase out remaining copies of David Walliams’s books after announcing last year that they would no longer publish him.

The book publisher said last year that it had dropped the children’s author following reports that he was accused of behaving inappropriately towards young women. Walliams strongly denies any claims and said at the time that he had not been informed about an investigation by HarperCollins.

HarperCollins has now confirmed that it has dropped Walliams’s backlist, according to The Bookseller. The publication reported that the publisher will gradually phase out stock of Walliams’s books in shops as well as e-book and audio versions available online….

…HarperCollins has published all 23 of the children’s books written by Walliams, beginning with 2008’s The Boy in the Dress, as well as his short story collections and picture books. They’ve sold over 60 million copies worldwide, while six of them have been adapted for TV.

Those titles – which include bestsellers Mr Stink, Gangsta Granny and Ratburger – have since disappeared from the HarperCollins website, along with his author page.

In December, HarperCollins announced that “after careful consideration, and under the leadership of its new CEO”, it would not be publishing any new titles by Walliams. It came after The Telegraph reported that a complaint from a junior colleague about his conduct lead to other staff members being interviewed and subsequently, he was dropped.

Former employees alleged to the publication that they were advised not to visit his home and to work in pairs when meeting with him.

A spokesperson for Harper Collins said at the time: “HarperCollins takes employee wellbeing extremely seriously and has processes in place for reporting and investigating concerns. To respect the privacy of individuals, we do not comment on internal matters.”

(6) GERRIT GRAHAM (1949-2026). [Item by Steve Green.] American actor Gerrit Graham died September 15, aged 76. Genre appearances include Beware! The Blob (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Strange New World (1975), Future Cop (1 ep, 1977), Demon Seed (1977), The Creature Wasn’t Nice (aka Naked Space, 1981), The Twilight Zone (1 ep, 1986), TerrorVision, Chopping Mall, Ratboy (all 1986), It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987), Tales from the Crypt (1 ep, 1989), Chud II: Bud the Chud, Martians Go Home (both 1989), Childs Play 2 (1990), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1 ep, 1993), Philadelphia Experiment II (1993), Babylon 5 (1 ep, 1994), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1 ep, 1995), Weird Science (1 ep, 1996), Star Trek: Voyager (1 ep, 1996), Gargoyles (voice, 4 eps, 1995-96). Magic in the Mirror (1997), Now and Again (22 eps, 1999-2000).

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

September 18, 1964 — The Addams Family series

The Addams Family series premiered on ABC sixty-two years ago this evening. I unreservedly loved that series which I didn’t rewatch until earlier this year after nearly twenty years of not watching it. It has held up remarkably well, and I do mean remarkably well. So well that even Suck Fairy which I watched it with had to admit that she liked it.

The Los Angeles Times obituary of David Levy explained how he came to create the series: “The idea for the series came to Levy when he was strolling with a friend down New York’s 5th Avenue and passed a display of Addams’ books. One, ‘Homebodies,’ showed the entire group of Addams characters in a family portrait on the cover. Levy was stopped in his tracks by the sight and told his friend: ‘There’s a hit series!’”

Now let’s talk about the characters here. Who wasn’t perfect? Be it John Astin as Gomez Addams or Carolyn Jones as his wife Morticia, they played their roles perfectly. And no, I’m certainly not forgetting Wednesday, their child. (Surely the name comes from the English folk poem, Wednesday’s child is full of woe), Uncle Fester or Thing. Not to mention Lurch played oh-so-well by Ted Cassidy.

It had pets, presaging to a great extent what Lio comic series would have. Aristotle was Pugsley’s pet octopus and Fang was his pet jaguar. Addams Family had a lion called Kitty Kat, and they had piranhas, Tristan and Isolde. Zelda was their vulture. Morticia had a very large carnivorous plant named Cleopatra and Wednesday has a pet tarantula by the name of Homer.

It didn’t last nearly as long as I thought did — just two seasons totaling sixty-four episodes shot in glorious black and white.

Halloween with the New Addams Family aired eleven years after the series went off the air with new characters added in. Seven years after the series was cancelled, the animated version of The Addams Family aired for sixteen episodes. It’s notable for a young Jodie Foster voicing Pugsley Addams. Only Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy returned in voice acting roles.

Gold Key Comics produced a comic book series in connection with the show, but it only lasted three issues. No idea why it had such a short run as I feared it would’ve had a longer one given how popular the show was.

It has a perfect a hundred percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. That’s right, a perfect score.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

Bliss makes himself right at Holmes.
Brevity has a groan-worthy awards show.
Crankshaft really had to wait for it.
Lio tries an enactment.
xkcd points out the danger of being used for scale.

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to treat yourself to Pad Thai with Barbara Krasnoff in Episode 293 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Barbara Krasnoff is a Nebula Award-nominated writer whose short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Apex, Amazing Stories, Space & Time, Weird Tales, Electric Velocipede, Doorways, Sybil’s Garage, Escape Velocity, Descant, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and many others, as well as anthologies such as Fat Girl in a Strange Land, Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm, Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring ’20s, Such A Pretty Face: Tales of Power & Abundance, Memories and Visions: Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction, Clockwork Phoenix 2, and more.

“Sabbath Wine,” which was published in Clockwork Phoenix 5 in 2016, was a finalist for the Nebula Award in the short story category, and later collected in The History of Soul 2065, her 2019 mosaic novel released by Mythic Delirium Books. She’s also the author of a non-fiction book for young adults, Robots: Reel to Real (Arco Publishing, 1982), and covers tech as Reviews Editor for The Verge.

We discussed how our Brooklyn childhoods molded us, which fantasy novel taught her about sex, why when she hit college her allegiance switched from poetry to science fiction, the writing workshop taught by Joanna Russ to which she was accepted (and why it never happened), how a quarter century’s worth of short stories became a mosaic novel, the reason prepping her book for publication meant adding pigeons, how real-world family stories are transmuted into fantasy, why kind words from Jane Yolen were better than winning a Nebula Award, her encouraging encounter with Ben Bova on a first class flight to the UK, plus much more.

(10) MORE FALLOUT SODA FLAVORS. “Jones Soda Brings Iconic Fallout™ Nuka-Cola Flavors Into Reality With Exclusive “Vault-dweller Variety” Pack Ahead Of Fallout Day 2026”.

Jones Soda Co. today announced the upcoming launch of the Jones x Fallout “Vault-Dweller Variety” 12-Pack, a club-exclusive beverage and collectible offering created to celebrate Fallout Day on October 23, 2026. The collaboration brings some of the Fallout universe’s most recognizable Nuka-Cola flavors from in-game lore into the hands of fans and collectors.Expected to begin shipping in late September ahead of Fallout Day, the “Vault-Dweller Variety” pack represents Jones Soda and Bethesda Softworks’ fourth Fallout-themed club release and the next evolution of a highly successful retail program built around transforming beloved, critically acclaimed Fallout canon into real-world experiences through authentic flavors, immersive packaging, and collectible fan engagement.

The pack will be available exclusively at participating club retail locations throughout the United States and Canada.

For Fallout fans, October 23 is more than a date on the calendar—it is a celebrated community tradition. This year, club members will have the opportunity to participate in that celebration through a limited-edition collection inspired by decades of Fallout lore….

…The 12-pack includes four glass bottles each of:

Nuka-Cola Quartz — Inspired by the rare crystal-clear Nuka-Cola variety recognized by Fallout fans, consumers can now experience a flavor that has existed in Fallout lore for years.
Nuka-Cola Cranberry — Acknowledging the celebrated Nuka-Cola variety known throughout the Fallout universe, Cranberry is being brought into reality for the first time as part of this exclusive club collection.
Nuka-Cola Quantum — The legendary blue-glowing Nuka-Cola that became one of Fallout’s most iconic and sought-after beverages returns as the centerpiece of the assortment, continuing its journey from game-world favorite to real-world fan phenomenon.

The club-exclusive collection also includes a custom Quartz-themed bottle opener and collectible caps, all housed in a specially designed, collector bag created to deliver a display-worthy experience for Fallout enthusiasts, collectors and gift-givers….

(11) HAPPY PLANETARY BIRTHDAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “NASA Finds The Youngest Planet Ever And It’s Still Being Born” says Hot Hardware.

Using NASA archives and ground-based observatories, astronomers have discovered Elias 2-24 b, a gas giant under one million years old that has just become the youngest exoplanet ever detected.

Located about 450 light-years from Earth within the star-forming ρ Ophiuchi cloud complex, Elias 2-24 b orbits around a young, orange dwarf star. Elias 2-24 b itself is still actively growing; roughly equivalent in mass to Jupiter, this giant offers scientists an extraordinarily rare real-time look at planetary evolution.

Elias 2-24 b shatters previous records held by four-way ties among worlds orbiting stars such as PDS 70 and WISPIT 2, all of which are older than five million years. At less than a million years old, Elias 2-24 b was born in a fraction of the time predicted by conventional core-accretion models….

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

Cats Sleep on SFF: Clarkesworld

Posted on September 18, 2026 by Mike Glyer

Jeffrey S. Jones shows us —

The neighbor’s cat Mika or “Buddy” is sleeping on Clarkesworld issue 223.

Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

Pixel Scroll 9/17/26 If You Can’t Scroll Anything Nice, Come Pixel Next To Me

Posted on September 17, 2026 by Mike Glyer

(1) WILL SOMEONE SAVE ‘WHO’? “’Doctor Who’: BBC Calls On Producers To Pitch ‘Brave’ Vision For Show” reports Deadline.

The BBC has fired the starting gun on the regeneration of Doctor Who.

The British broadcaster on Thursday launched a competitive tender for Season 16, in which producers will pitch in a bake-off-style process to refresh the iconic sci-fi series.

The tender process follows the BBC announcing a major creative rethink of Doctor Who in June after showrunner Russell T Davies and producer Bad Wolf abandoned ship, and Disney’s co-production deal expired. Ncuti Gatwa also will not return as the Time Lord.

In a document inviting submissions (see it here), the BBC said producers should detail a vision for Doctor Who that can return to screens in 2028-29 — as predicted by Deadline — and ensures the series remains “relevant, surprising, brave and inspiring for both long-standing fans and new audiences.”…

A copy of BBC’s tender is here: “Invitation to Tender: Doctor Who”.

(2) ENTERPRISE SHUTTLE DEBUTS IN 1976. Space.com remembers September 17, 1976: “50 years ago, NASA rolled out its 1st space shuttle Enterprise. The shuttle ‘was one of the things that really inspired me,’ ISS astronaut says”.

Star Trek actors attending 1976 unveiling of space shuttle Enterprise.

Like most test pilots, Jack Hathaway was always looking for a faster and more capable winged vehicle to fly. Even as a kid, he dreamed of being at the controls of the “coolest plane out there.”

Unfortunately for him, he was a few years too young.

NASA’s first space shuttle orbiter, OV-101 or “Enterprise,” made its debut 50 years ago today (Sept. 17). Though only a prototype used for atmospheric and ground tests, Enterprise proved that a spacecraft could launch like a rocket and land as a glider, enabling the world’s first reusable orbital platform….

… Enterprise became a museum piece in 1985. Twenty-six years later, the three-surviving space-worthy orbiters followed, permanently landing in institutions on both U.S. coasts. Hathaway did not become an astronaut until a decade after that….

…”Would you now roll out orbiter 101, now christened the ‘Enterprise,'” directed Jim Fletcher, then the NASA administrator, on Sept. 17, 1976, as he stood before an audience outside the vehicle’s manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California.

As the crowd caught its first glimpses of the now familiar black-and-white winged spacecraft, a marching band performed the theme to “Star Trek.” Most of the TV show’s primary cast were there as NASA’s invited guests. OV-101 was originally going to be named the “Constitution” before a grassroots letter writing campaign convinced the government to name its first space shuttle after the show’s fictional starship….

(3) HISTORIC FEMINIST FANZINES. Joachim Boaz has a very interesting interview with a scholar who’s working with feminist fanzines of the Seventies and Eighties: “Exploration Log 17: Interview with Loïg J. F. Pascual on 1970s-1980s Feminist Science Fiction Fandoms” at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. Here’s an excerpt:

5. What were the most important feminist SF fanzines (and their editors) that helped shape the community and form the narrative in the 70s and 80s?

It can be said that feminist fanzines, as such, emerged in the 1970s, since it was at that time that the word “feminist” took on the meaning given to it by the “second wave” in North America: the personal is political, and gender inequalities are not exclusive to the public sphere. Sexism structures all social relations, and the feminist struggle must especially include the realm of cultural productions. There seems to be a consensus that the first SF fiction fanzines to identify as feminist appeared in the mid-1970s. The first was the Canadian The Witch and the Chameleon by Amanda Bankier, and soon after appeared Janus by Wisconsin fans Janice Bogstad and Jeanne Gomoll, supported by the Madison club. We can also point to the special issue of Khatru published in 1975, the fanzines Aurora and New Moon from the 1980s, and Susan Wood’s short-lived Room of One’s Own (1981). There were other fanzines addressing feminist or queer themes at the time: Blatant (1980-1989) by Avedon Carol, Harlot (1981-1983) by Carol and AnneLaurie Logan, Windhaven (1977-1979) by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, the Australian zine WeberWoman’s Wrevenge (1981-2001), Suzette Haden Elgin’s The Lonesome Node (1980-1990), and perhaps also Denys Howard’s fanzines, among others. The list is long; we could also include the reviews written by Elisabeth Vornarburg in the Quebec fanzine Requiem/Solaris.

(4) TIPS FOR VISITING THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM. Alison Scott has given File 770 permission to reprint the advice she shared with friends on Facebook upon her return from seeing The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, currently on loan from France.

By Dan Koehl – Tapestry de Bayeux, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=658776

Tips for visiting the Bayeux tapestry at the British Museum:

You’ll probably have your tickets already, but if not the next batch go on sale in October. If you’re getting tickets, get a morning timeslot because it’s clear that there is a queueing issue that gets worse through the day.

We had 3pm tickets – we were told we could not join the queue until 2.58, which led to a certain amount of milling around in a phoney queue. That got us into the queue, and at about 3.05 our tickets were checked.

We were then in queue #1; an empty room with a snake queue (this is normally the object handing area for the Sainsbury gallery). There were a number (plenty) of portable exhibition stools, and I grabbed one of these.

After about 30 minutes we got through the door into the start of the exhibition proper, with a no photography sign. This was a second room with a bunch of large wall panels saying things like ‘a great battle’ ‘two rivals across a sea’ in giant text over pictures of the countryside. That turned out to be another queue.

At the end of that queue (another half hour maybe?) there was a briefing before you get into the exhibition. Not the tapestry, the exhibition. However this isn’t really an exhibition, it’s just a queue with a series of short videos which are designed to take 15 minutes in total (they are acclimatising your eyes to low light amongst other things) but in fact took a bunch of time longer than that. At about 4:30 we got our first glimpse of the tapestry from above – you can see the people below looking at it – and that was genuinely very cool. Photography isn’t allowed at all, though a few photos got taken on the first day before photography was banned.

We got into the tapestry at about 4:40 and left at about 5:15. It’s fantastic, well worth the queue (but go earlier so it’s shorter). You’re shuffled along the tapestry and strongly discouraged from stopping to look at things in detail, but there’s plenty of time to look at everything.

Alternatively, go to Reading for the replica, or go back to Bayeux a few months after it returns – neither will be anything like as crowded as this.

And then we all went to the pub.

(5) THAT WOULD BE ‘NO’. “Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on ‘The Ministry for the Future’” at AP News.

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of one of the most famous novels on climate change, says he has done more than 600 speaking events since “The Ministry for the Future” was published in 2020 — but he won’t read the first chapter out loud.

In those opening pages, a prolonged heat wave grips a large swath of northern India. Told from the perspective of an aid worker named Frank, the book starts with a breakdown of the electrical grid, generators that run out of fuel and high temperatures combined with high humidity that lead to death everywhere. Unable to get relief, people die on rooftops, on the streets and in a lake. In the end, the heat kills 20 million people.

“I just have this instinctive sense, no, this is too harsh,” said Robinson during an interview with The Associated Press last month. “This is too … I’m not willing to read this one aloud.”

The first chapter struck a nerve with many readers because it brought to the forefront the very real fear of unchecked climate change, caused mainly by the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fuels like oil, gas and coal. Greenhouse gases build up heat in the atmosphere, which manifests on Earth as both higher temperatures and an intensifying of extreme weather events….

(6) ARKADY MARTINE Q&A. Ismail D. Soldan is “Catching Up With Arkady Martine” at Black Gate.

How has your work as a historian and scientist impact your writing?

Completely. The Teixcalaan novels really came out of the work I did as a historian. They were in some ways a version of a post-doctoral project I was working on except the ideas behind that post-doctoral project in fictional form. Another way of exploring the same things really.

I think the reason I will never not have a day job is in part because day jobs give you health insurance but also because I feel like the more I am exposed to ideas and ways of examining the world the more I work with them on a everyday basis that makes me familiar with them, the more interesting my writing gets, the more in-depth I can be.

(7) NBA LONGLISTS. Publishers Weekly has the 2026 National Book Award longlists for Fiction, Nonfiction. Based on the short descriptions provided, there do not appear to be any genre works included.

(8) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] On last night’s episode of Jeopardy! there was an entire category devoted to Star Trek, celebrating its 60th anniversary.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

September 17, 1926 — Roddy McDowall. (Died 1998.)

By Paul Weimer: Roddy McDowall’s genre work came into my awareness early. He was the voice of V.I.N.CENT, the robot in the much maligned (but a favorite of mine) movie The Black Hole. I might not have an ear for voices overmuch, but even I could hear his distinctive voice and connect it to the actor I then saw in episodes of Buck Rogers and Tales of the Gold Monkey. His voice popped up again in my ears as Sam in the Return of the King animated movie.

And from there, he continued to become a very welcome actor, in and out of genre when I encountered him. And it seemed like I kept running into him and his work everywhere I turned. His portrayal of the TV show host in Fright Night might be my most favorite role. The original Planet of the Apes films. An episode of The Twilight Zone (where he winds up as an exhibit in an alien zoo). An episode of the 1960’s Batman TV series had him so very nearly kill Batman and Robin (who had to be saved by O’Hara and the police rather than themselves as normal). He even shows up in the 1963 Cleopatra as Octavian.

One last thing I didn’t learn until some years ago, but delights me now (it would have made no impression until this century) is that he was an avid photographer, specializing in actor and actress portraits. Truly, a multi-modal talent.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Bizarro makes a seasonal adjustment to famous art.
Free Range adapts a contemporary complaint to ancient times.
Strange Brew has a suprising bumper sticker.

(11) EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY. “Merriam-Webster dictionary adds 1,400 words, including trash panda” – BBC has the highlights. (Subscription required by readers outside the UK.)

Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary publisher, has added 1,400 new words, including glow-up, looksmaxxing, meme coin and trash panda – the affectionate nickname for raccoons.

Ahead of autumn, cuffing season has also been added, referring to the time of year when single people seek a romantic partner with whom to spend the cold months.

Some terms will already be familiar to many, such as whack-a-mole (“a situation in which a new problem appears as soon as an existing similar problem has been addressed”).

Others may be less known, such as the Mandela effect (“the experience of many people collectively having the same false memory”).

Some words are distinctly American, like the adjective California sober, which the dictionary defines as using marijuana and/or alcohol while abstaining from other drugs, like cocaine or meth.

Here are a few more of the newest additions:

Rickroll – to prank someone into listening to Never Gonna Give You Up by English singer Rick Astley
Uncanny valley – the creepy feeling from seeing something artificial that almost appears real
parasocial – a one-sided emotional connection
vibe coding – using an artificial intelligence system to generate computer code
chili crisp – a spicy, crunchy condiment made from oil and fried bits peppers, garlic or shallots
yacht rock – a genre of soft rock music that began in the 1970s
neckbeard – a beard covering the chin and throat, as well as the “culture” associated with those beards, which sometimes can be a disparaging term as meaning misogynistic or a computer nerd
shapewear – tight clothing that is designed to shape and smooth the body
Sunday scaries – the feeling of anxiety or sadness knowing that the weekend is ending
crashout – a dramatic ending, loss or defeat, or emotional breakdown

In 2025, the word slop was chosen, after its definition was expanded to include “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”.

(12) GREEN LANTERN SHINES ON SMALL TOWN. “Rushville, the setting of the HBO superhero show ‘Lanterns,’ encouraged to take advantage of sudden attention” advises the Flatwater Free Press.

Rushville residents: Don’t be surprised if unannounced, out-of-town visitors come calling.

That’s what happens when a Hollywood writer inserts your community into the storyline of a DC Comics superhero – in Rushville’s case, the Green Lantern. “Don’t underestimate the dedication of the superhero comic fan,” said Alex Grand, comic book historian and author of “Understanding Superhero Comic Books.” “People will come.

They want to experience what their superheroes experience.”

Fans of Superman have been tied to Cleveland for nearly a century because the pair of teens who created the Man of Steel lived there. Grand said he visited Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, was from – “just to experience the community’s vibe.”

And now Rushville, at least for the moment, sits at center stage in the superhero world, thanks to the Green Lantern, the new HBO hit series “Lanterns” and its executive producer, Tom King, who has family ties to the northwest Nebraska town of 877….

…Although “Lanterns” was filmed on the Warner Bros. lot and in the Ventura County, California, community of Piru, the storyline provides glimpses of Rushville.

Heidi Beguin said Rushville’s water tower is hard to miss in “Lanterns.” “The series is definitely not filmed in Rushville, but it is so much fun to watch for the little pieces that are Rushville. The water tower shows up again and again.”…

…The mayor said she and others signed a confidentiality agreement. Rushville received $5,000 in payment from Random Productions, the series producer. The agreement allowed Random Productions to photograph and film public locations, including signage….

(13) EMMY WINNER GETS MORE VIEWS. Widow’s Bay dominated the 2026 Emmys with a record 14 wins, the most ever for a comedy series in a single year, and JustWatch – The Streaming Guide data shows its streaming popularity climbed right along with it.

The numbers below are based on strong streaming intent signals from real JustWatch users, tracked across the nominations period (July 8 to 15) and the awards and post win period (September 13 to 16).

A few highlights from the report:

Widow’s Bay Leads From Start To Finish: The Apple TV comedy posted the highest JustWatch popularity score of all five nominees tracked, every single day, before and after the ceremony. Its popularity climbed 72 percentage points (pp) from the nominations period to its post win peak.

Nominations Didn’t Predict Popularity: The Pitt led the field with 25 nominations and won Outstanding Drama Series for a second year running, but its popularity only grew 9 pp.

A Limited Series Turnaround: DTF St. Louis fell well below its own baseline during the nominations period, then jumped past The Pitt in popularity right after the ceremony to land as the second most popular title in the tracker, the same week it beat nominations leader Beef for Outstanding Limited Series.

Wins Don’t Guarantee Buzz: Spider-Noir won five Emmys at the Creative Arts ceremony, but its popularity kept falling through awards weekend, closing out the tracking window at its lowest point of the summer.

(14) JUDGING A NEW CRATER ON THE MOON. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “Asteroid Strike Blasts Crater Wide Enough To Swallow City Blocks On Moon” at Hot Hardware.

… Officially deemed McGetchin, the new crater spans roughly 728 feet (222 meters) across and up to 141 feet (43 meters) deep. Larger than the Roman Colosseum, it is the largest recent impact site ever recorded in the solar system. Scientists estimate that a collision of this magnitude occurs on the lunar surface only once every 132 years, making its discovery a statistically rare, once-in-a-lifetime scientific biggie….

The impact itself took place between April and May of 2024 when a traveling asteroid or comet fragment about the size of a three-to-six-story building slammed into the Moon’s near side. And since the Moon lacks an atmosphere, incoming space debris strike the surface at full, destructive speeds. And yet, despite its intensity, the initial strike went unnoticed by terrestrial and orbital telescopes.

It wasn’t until researchers conducted routine data comparisons using images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that the event came to light. Robert Wagner, an LRO mission scientist, noticed an anomalous, glaringly bright spot encircled by a dark halo while processing wide-angle imagery. Subsequent follow-up scans confirmed that the bright feature was not the crater itself, but rather a vast field of reflective blanket material blasted outward during the explosion….

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

LAcon V Panel on How to Write Violence Wrestles With Reality

Posted on September 17, 2026 by Mike Glyer

By Francis Hamit:

Using Violent Conflict in your Writing

Monday, August 31, 2026 at 10:30

Panelists:

Cliff Winnig
David Tucker, Ph.D. (moderator)
Lincoln Peters
Madeline James
T R Napper

In Person, Not Recorded, Not Streamed

Violence and combat play an important role in many speculative fiction stories. But given that most of us have never been in a real fight, and many of us lack combat training, how can we write fight scenes honestly and accurately? Our panelists experienced in martial arts or combat will discuss physical conflict’s role in a story as well as how to properly blend it across individual, tactical, and strategic layers

This became largely a discussion of martial arts. How do you write a fight scene honestly? In fiction the blow by blow descriptions of a fight are often too specific and unreal. Experiencing the actual event.is traumatic and surreal.

“There was trauma, lots and lots of trauma,” said one panelist, referring to his own experience as a bystander is an African civil war; “There was a part of me that hadn’t caught up to what was actually happening. It was unreal.”

“Part of my brain had a tactical response,” said another panelist about a violent encounter from his past.

Writing such scenes carries certain obligations. “Think about what you have to put that character through. They actualy have to kiIl people! You (as the character) may not realize you have been wounded. If you open (your story) with a fight scene you are at a disadvantage. The reader may not care about the outcome. If they don’t care, they may not finish reading it.”

Part of the discussion referred to fight scenes in film and television, and in graphic novels. This is a kind of posed theatre that has little to do with reality.

“The only rule in a sword fight is ‘don’t die’. If you are fighting someone in armor, you have to stab.” A blow-by-blow description is not necessary, and may slow things down. (The same rule applies to sex scenes. FH.)

There was a demonstration with lightweight nylon practice swords, and a recommendation: to take up martial arts classes to gain real world experience. Sword fighting manuals were cited for visual reference. Likewise, if guns are involved, spend time at a local shooting range where guns can be rented for a few hours to get a sense of what they feel like in your hand. If your story is bogged down, you can have the bad guy burst through a door with a gun in his hand.

Relationships between characters were discussed. “One should always be a great warrior. Women in combat have become a dominant trope. Everyone has a different body. Everyone moves differently. Women have a lot of awareness in their body.” (So does anyone who has been in the military. Basic Combat Training is partially about killing people and breaking things. It is a traumatic experience. Advanced tactical training, which may involve torture, is more so. If you’ve been in a combat zone you experience blast and vibration injuries and develop heightened awareness and PTSD. FH.)

Fear as character motivation was discussed. “I had concern,” said one panelist who had been in a war zone; “The fear came later. Some people go into a rage. Some start bawling. If you are not used to it you don’t know what is going to happen next.”

Someone suggested reading letters or diaries by soldiers as a reference. (Well, I have a book, but it’s not very exciting. Most war is downright boring. FH.)

At the end an eager young writer asked about describing wounds. None of the panelists seem to have any idea how to do that or where to get information. I suggested a Red Cross First Aid class or a community college EMT course.

Unknown to me at that time was Dr. Bruce C. Davis’s class:

Select Murder and Mayhem – Writing Realistic Injuries for Authors

Saturday, August 29, 2026

09:00 a.m.

Bruce Davis (moderator)

Recorded

Hollywood and your favorite authors can often get injury and trauma wrong. Come to this presentation to learn the do’s and don’ts of depicting injury and trauma in your fiction!

Dr Davis writes fiction but his day job is as a trauma surgeon. Fortunately his presentation was recorded and is available. It’s not for sensitive viewers, but is full of valuable information. He destroys several common visual tropes from film and television and explains what actually happens to the human body when it is severely injured. Well worth your time to watch and take notes. This is the same class he gives to medical students.