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 it on the ship momentarily after this picture was taken.
Center: George Takei and Bjo Trimble talk to David Gerrold, at right. (Person on left not identified.)
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.
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.
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?”
Before.
After.
When the Galileohad 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.
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.
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 novelBirth of Orisha, forthcoming next February from Caezik Books, an imprint of Arc Manor.
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”.
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.
Damon Knight
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.
(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.
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).
“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.]
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.
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!
… 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?…
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….
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.
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….
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.
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.
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 theFallout 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 ofFallout’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….
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.]
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.
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.”…
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….
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.
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.
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….
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.
(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.
Roddy McDowall
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 TheTwilight 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.
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”.
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.
… 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).]
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.
Which toys will make it into the National Toy Hall of Fame this November? Can Mouse Trap capture the final prize? Will Sorry! apologize for beating the competition? Can Bingo call its shot? Will Tickle Me Elmo get the last laugh?
The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York, has announced the 12 finalists for induction into the hall: Bingo, Bop It!, Care Bears, Mahjong, Monster High dolls, Mouse Trap, Pokémon Trading Card Game, Polly Pocket, slide, Sorry!, Tickle Me Elmo, and Yahtzee.
The 12 toys following the jump are finalists for 2026 induction into The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame. Only a few will take their honored places in the hall this year when they are announced by The Strong this November! And fans can join the debate by voting for their favorite finalists from September 16-23 as part of a “Player’s Choice” ballot at toyhalloffame.org.
(1) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM INFO. Registration is open for the 2026 Sturgeon Symposium to be held October 15-16.
The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction is pleased to announce that registration for the 4th Annual Sturgeon Symposium is now open. This year’s symposium will be held at the KU Hall Center for the Humanities (900 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS) on Thursday, October 15 and Friday, October 16. We invite you to join us!
In addition to the Sturgeon Award Ceremony, which will feature a reading from this year’s yet-to-be announced winner, there will be a variety of panels on a range of topics that weave together creative, analytical, and teaching interests. On top of all that, author Dr. Ida Yoshinaga will be the featured guest.
Registration is free to KU students and $20 for all other attendees. In addition to being able to attend/participate in all of the Symposium panels and events, including lunch both days and the Thursday afternoon reception, attendees will receive a symposium t-shirt with registration. Registration will be open until the day of the event, but t-shirts can only be guaranteed to those who register by October 1.
The bestselling author R.F. Kuang has broken her silence over backlash to the inclusion of a minor Israeli character in her newest novel, Taipei Story.
The book, published last week, follows a Chinese-American student, Lily Chen, who studies abroad in Taipei hoping to reconnect with her cultural roots and perfect her Mandarin. But she quickly finds that bridging the gap between her Chinese heritage and American upbringing will be more difficult than she imagined.
In May, before the book was published, an excerpt from Taipei Story which included the unnamed Israeli character was leaked online. In a scene that lasts barely two pages, Lily attends a concert featuring a pianist “from Israel” who is described as “a big deal.” The vignette has little bearing on the plot beyond showing how Lily finds catharsis in the music.
Social media critics accused Kuang — who has previously donated special editions of her books to raise money for humanitarian relief organizations in Gaza — of “normalizing Israel” by depicting an Israeli character in a positive light. The topic trended on BookTok (for the uninitiated, TikToks about books), with some users calling on readers to cancel their preorders of the novel and bombard Taipei Story’s GoodReads page with one-star ratings. (So-called “review-bombing” violates GoodReads guidelines.)
Kuang did not comment on the social media-fueled controversy for months.
But in an interview with USA Today and at a book tour stop last week at Sixth & I, a historic Washington, D.C. synagogue, Kuang pushed back on her critics, saying the backlash reflected a misinterpretation of the passage. Video from the event was posted to TikTok, and the Forward independently confirmed with Kuang’s publisher that the recording accurately captured her remarks.
“I want to read charitably the person who’d seen the words ‘Israeli pianist’ and immediately been so afraid that this book was condoning these practices,” said Kuang, who didn’t specify what “these practices” referred to in the clip. “But the fact of the matter is that’s just not what that scene does. That’s not how it was intended, and that’s not how it reads.”
Kuang seemed to say that the scene, which takes place as Lily is in the midst of a personal cultural identity crisis, was actually commentary on the political dynamics underlying cultural encounters.
“I instead wanted to invite the reader to ask questions about what’s going on in this scene, what is this character noticing based on what we know about where she comes from, in the position of an arrogant American study abroad student,” Kuang said. “This scene raises a lot of questions about who gets to move through the world, who is received in what ways, what are geopolitics that undergird something as innocent as a concert.”…
… Some online have suggested that the scene is “an allegory for the issue of watching Israeli occupation unfold.” Others read it as a commentary on the prestige afforded to foreign artists while Taiwanese artists are overlooked — and, by extension, on which conflicts around the world command our attention. Or perhaps the pianist’s nationality is significant simply because the narrator has a habit throughout the novel of identifying people by where they are from: “an Italian undergraduate,” “a German girl,” a “Hong Kong director.”
If the scene is meant to carry a hidden meaning, Kuang isn’t spelling it out….
For most people, Wednesday will be just another day – the midweek hump at school or work. But not for Pokémon fans.
The Japanese brand has become one of the most recognisable in the world, with its colourful creatures appearing in video games and on shop shelves across the globe.
But perhaps most synonymous with the Pokémon phenomenon is its trading card game, which has been played, bought and sold between collectors for the last three decades.
Wednesday marks the release of Pokémon’s 30th anniversary range – a day one collector described as the brand’s biggest day “in the last decade, if not more”.
Gus Hall, owner of Evolution Games in Halifax, said he expected fans to queue before shops open to get their hands on the first release of the cards.
A long-term Pokémon collector himself, Hall said he was “massively excited” about the anniversary range.
“If you want my personal opinion, I would say this is the biggest release for a good while for Pokémon. Some of the products and the cards they’ve leaked… are crazy,” he said….
…Hall said a box that may have been worth £200 in the late 1990s would now sell for about £35,000.
As a child, Hall would spend about £1.99 of his pocket money on a new Pokémon card. His parents would “go ballistic” at him for what they believed was a waste of money.
He said: “They’d say to me: ‘Why are you wasting your money on these types of things?’… Now I get the exact same from parents who come into my store and say to their children: ‘Why are you wasting your money on these [cards]?’… But, you know, look who’s laughing now!”
But what has made these cards so popular – and so valuable?
“Pokémon is different to other things in society these days – there’s nothing electronic in trading cards,” Hall said. “Parents quite like it because it’s healthy; it creates friendships and trading and gaming, and incorporates all these wonderful things that aren’t detrimental to a child or young person’s mind.”…
(4) THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING. Robin Anne Reid gives readers a “Rec: The Uprising (film)” at Writing from Ithilien.
So we saw a fantastic film yesterday, and I am absolutely recommending it to the all the medievalists and Tolkienists I know! If you’re in the US, and want to see it, you might want to get there ASAP because it may not be in the theatres for very long.
It opened in the US on September 10, and we hadn’t heard anything about it (Judy’s sister asked her if we were seeing it!), or seen ANY preview in any of the movies we saw earlier in the summer….
… Judy’s field of study is late 14th century England, specifically focused on religion, and she thought it was great. As I always say at Kalamazoo, I am NOT a medievalist, but have learned a bit from Judy and from Tolkien studies (though literary medievalists doing Tolkien studies have a very different approach than historians), and I thought it was great as well.
No spoilers although given the historical subject, even I knew how it would end, except that NO, it is NOT about the origin of Robin Hood (IMdb still claims has the “true story that inspired the legend of Robin Hood” although Robin Hood stories pre-dated the revolt).
It is about the Great Revolt of 1381 (which historians no longer call the peasant’s revolt because clergy and artisans were also involved). Judy says that the film’s creators were likely aware of the the work by scholars like Stephen Justice (Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381).
Anyway: what caught my eye (and is the reason that this post is in my “Webs by Women” category) is that women were everywhere in the film in all the major scenes and marching to London. Mostly not named, of course, but there in the world (keep an eye on Alice who tells her story about why she is there). The named leaders were men—John Ball, Wat Tyler, and Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman—so yeah, don’t don’t think Robin Hood, think Piers Plowman — the film info—“Ploughman.”…
The Moomin books about lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts who live in harmony with nature are a global publishing phenomenon, having sold up to 30m copies since the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated them between 1945 and 1977.
Now previously unseen drawings of her eccentric characters will be among more than 100 exhibits in a major exhibition that is being staged in London 25 years after her death.
Tove Jansson and her Families will open at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in November, it will be announced on Thursday.
Billed as the UK’s first exhibition to focus on Jansson’s illustrations, it will feature sketches, photographs and films, as well as her correspondence with those closest to her and fans of all ages….
(6) PASADENA CHALK FESTIVAL COMING SOON. The Lightbringer Project’s Pasadena Chalk Festival takes place September 26.
WHAT: Pasadena Chalk Festival, a Museum Without Walls WHEN: Saturday, September 26th 10:00am – 6:30pm Sunday, September 27th 11:00am – 6:30pm WHERE: Brookside Park, next to Kidspace Museum, near the Rose Bowl 480 N Arroyo Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91103 COST: FREE
ABOUT: In its thirty-third year, Light Bringer Project produces this beloved annual festival with over five hundred skilled artists who create large colorful chalk murals. They range in both style and subject matter, including funny or whimsical illustrations, portraits of people, recreations of masterpieces, incredible original designs, adorable characters, moving tributes, powerful statements, and just plain jaw-dropping art. This is not your typical visual art experience; it allows you into the “studio” of the artist, where you can talk with them and see them at work.
All funds raised through merchandise and our unique Art Gallery &Silent Auction support the arts education programs of Light Bringer Project throughout the year. We thank you for showing us your support so that we can continue to offer these programs to local youth.
Here is last year’s award winner, “Cyborg Maiden #3” by Stacy Malapraya.
…Android and supporting characters in TV shows were far from a new idea. Indeed, C3PO and R2D2 had even been given their own cartoon spin-off from Star Wars, due to their popularity with children. To that extent, Data was not a radical departure. Data’s robot nature was presented simply as his actor, Brent Spiner, wearing yellow contact lenses and unusual make-up to give his skin a slightly inhuman look. Additionally, Data used slightly more formal language, notably avoiding contractions. Both his odd skin colour and odd language choices, made little sense but were also quite effective ways of marking Data out as being unusual.
Like Spock before him, the degree to which Data lacked emotions was only true in a broad brushstrokes sense. Data (like Spock) would express emotion-like states related to intellect such as puzzlement, curiosity and concern. By the third2 episode Data is presented as a character subject to the sexual interest of other crewmates (security officer Tasha Yar), allbeit, due to the influence of an alien infection.
Star Trek: The Next Generation made use of the multiple characters in the crew by having some episodes focus on a specific character….
…In season 1, Data’s origins are developed in the episode “Datalore”. The title is a play on words as the episode does cover Data’s background but also introduces Data’s evil twin named Lore. While not the strongest of episodes, it did provide Brent Spiner the opportunity to play two quite different versions of the character. Additionally, we learn that Data’s lack of emotions is a design choice of his creator….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
September 16, 1932 — Karen Anderson. (Died 2018.)
By Paul Weimer: Karen Anderson, the formidable wife of Poul Anderson. But it would be unfair and unjust for me to merely label her as the wife of an SF author, no matter how big of an SF writer they are. Karen Anderson was heavily into filking, and at the very least popularized the term, if not outright invented it. Filking is not one of my strengths or area of knowledge, so I don’t know Karen’s work in that field too directly. The first time I saw her name in print is when I was exposed to her collaborations with Poul Anderson, particularly Ys, a personal favorite of mine.
Karen Anderson
Ys is a set of historical fantasy novels set at the end of the Western Roman Empire, is what is now Brittany. Our hero is a Roman Prefect, Gratillonius. He has been sent to Gaul by Rome, and by turns, winds up at the city of Ys, and his story eventually turns from historical fiction to straight up historical fantasy. Ys is a city that never existed, a legend, a myth that in our world was developed in a series of romances and stories in the late Middle Ages.
The Andersons take that myth and story, mix it in with ideas ranging from Phoenician history to the Golden Bough, and tell the story of how a Roman prefect fights against the final fall of the west to a dark Age (David Perry and Matt Gabriele don’t hate me) in order to preserve the city of Ys, at least for a while. A classic “Fighting against the raging of the light” from Poul Anderson, leavened and softened by his wife’s collaboration.
Showing her interest in historical fiction straight up, she also co-wrote The Last Viking with her husband, telling the story of Harald Hardrada, from his time as a mercenary in Constantinople until his ultimate destiny and conflict in the wars of the year 1066. Between this series and the historical elements of Ys, Karen Anderson’s knowledge and writing enthusiasm clearly meshed well with her husband’s. In addition, Karen Anderson wrote numerous essays and articles, which pepper the fanzines of the era.
And, apparently, she is the “Karen” that is listed among the people dedicated in Robert Heinlein’s Friday (and also appears in a cameo at the end of Number of the Beast as well.)
As New York City middle school and high school students return to classrooms this term, they are receiving access to “Know Your Rights,” an educational comic book that prepares individuals for encounters with federal law enforcement officers.
It is the latest release by Civics for All, a program of the city schools’ department of social studies and civics. The program began in 2020 and now includes 45 comics. The print run of “Know Your Rights” is 140,000 — half in English, half in Spanish. It is also available digitally in 14 languages.
The comic presents vignettes, based on real events, about encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including guidance specific to New York City that emphasizes knowing your legal options at home, at work or walking to school. In easy-to-follow scenes with clear and brightly colored artwork, the story gives readerslegal hotline numbers, and advice on planning ahead, organizing documents and memorizing emergency contact information.
“Know Your Rights,” written by Alex Segura and drawn by David Hahn, was suggested by members of Project Open Arms, a city school system effort to support immigrants, including asylum seekers. They saw value in helping students and families understand the rights that come with being an undocumented person.
The Education Department doesn’t track students’ and families’ immigration status but the number of students learning English in schools last year was about 146,000.
The comic arrives as the political climate around immigration remains heated. Last month, New York State’s Local Cops, Local Crimes Act went into effect. It bars ICE from deputizing local police to enforce civil immigration law. The publication also comes about six months after a high school student from the Bronx was freed from federal detention….
(11) CAPTAIN AMERICA’S SHIELD GETS A NEW HOME.
(12) TRAILER PARK.“Wildwood – Final Trailer”. Experience a world beyond your imagination, only in theatres October 23.
Armies rise. Worlds collide. When Prue McKeel’s baby brother is taken into the mysterious forest beyond Portland, she sets out to bring him home and discovers a hidden world on the brink of war. From LAIKA, the studio behind Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings, and ParaNorman, comes Wildwood, an epic new fantasy adventure directed by Travis Knight.
[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, N., Jo Fletcher, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern, who explains“You Hailed Lieutenant Worf — And Frequently” comes via Gilbert & Sullivan/Pirate of Penzance, “You said ‘Orphan’ Frequently”, of course. And Dern asks, who will be the first to comment (some version of), “No, Only Once.”).]
(1) PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS. Works of genre interest led the field at the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony on September 15, claiming trophies in 8 of the 19 categories presented.
(2) STOKERCON ADDS GOH. The Horror Writers Association has announced that R. J. Joseph will be a Guest of Honor at STOKERCON 2027 along with Nancy Collins, Joe Hill, T. Kingfisher, and Hailey Piper.
R. J. Joseph
Rhonda Jackson Garcia, also known as R. J. Joseph, is a preeminent voice in the horror academic field, leading the discourse on the genre as it intersects with gender, race, and class. Her work has a place in both pop culture and academia, straddling those lines in a way that unites rather than separates.
With two short story collections under her belt, R.J. Joseph is also an engaging storyteller weaving tales that incorporate motherhood and visceral horror within the Southern Gothic landscape. We are honored to welcome her as a Guest of Honor at StokerCon 2027!
(3) KATE ELLIOTT’S LACON V REPORT. Here is an excerpt from each part.
…Basically, I—an introvert—arrived braced for four and a half days of extroverting. Think of it as mental fueling before a long distance race. I knew how far I had to go, and as with outrigger canoe practice, I adjusted my mindset to that “distance.”
I was offered quite a bit of programming (5 panels, a reading, a table talk, and an autographing), which also filled up my schedule. I turned down a Thursday panel so I would have time to adjust to being back in con-mode. As it happened, that allowed me to hang out for as long as I wanted—which extended a lunch well into the afternoon as people came and went from the table. The day was called with a joint signing by Martha Wells and me, arranged by our joint editor Lee Harris at a nearby Barnes and Noble, which was fun (he interviewed us and then people asked questions and we signed books)….
… The thing about panels at a convention is that panelists rarely prepare. These are not prewritten talks or papers offered to an audience. Panels are more of a conversation about a topic, generally featuring four to six people (one of whom is a moderator). This means that a panel can range from being a great organically-driven interesting freeform discussion or a flat-footed series of questions asked by the moderator and answered in turn by each (unprepared) panelist after which the moderator goes on to the next question. I find the latter option far less interesting, because it isn’t a discussion if the people talking can’t respond to, riff off of, or elaborate on something someone else said.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised because all the moderators did great jobs. In addition, all of the panels I was on had panelists who were reasonable adults who did not hog the mike, be dismissive toward fellow panelists, or pontificate at length without paying attention to others, and believe me, I’ve been on panels when that happened, and worse….
… Saturday morning at 9 am I had a panel in a back room of the Hilton conference level on “Older Women in SF and F.” I thought this one would be scantly attended but there were quite a few people. The topic was suggested by Anne Keck, who lives on Maui and is also an outrigger canoe paddler; she and I are online acquainted and were able to meet for the first time, which was cool. The other panelists were Kara Lenore (moderator), Brianne Shiraki, and Claire Davon. You know what? This was just plain fun. We all had a lot to say, we were all women over forty so have a lot of experience in the world of older women to draw from, and the audience was very engaged. It’s a good subject that can be tackled from multiple angles: 1. what are books/film/tv that feature older women as protagonists or even older women at all 2. why is there a dearth of older women in narrative? or is there? what roles do they generally play? what are the stereotypes (out of Hollywood and US culture, mostly)? what roles can they play beyond the stereotypes? how can we push back? why is it important to see women and girls of all ages in fiction? and so on….
Once upon a time, there was a story that twisted the fabric of its origins, becoming more horrific, more deadly, taking tropes and beats from classic fairytales and turning them into something new. Something terrifying.
Fairytale retellings or novels that draw upon traditional folklore have always been popular, but horror’s ability to take those cherished stories of childhood and transform them into something new is marked. It’s a personal favorite of mine; capitalizing on the inherent eeriness of fairytales, leaning into deeper, darker motifs and plots. Fairytales in general tend to be quite creepy, even the ones that have happily ever afters. So it’s no surprise that horror authors are drawn to these types of stories, eager to dive deeper into the aspects of humanity these classic tropes and tales allow us to explore….
For example –
Premee Mohamed, The Butcher of the Forest
Veris Thorn—the only person to ever enter a forbidden, magical forest and survive—is forced to go back inside to find a powerful tyrant’s missing children. Racing the clock, Veris must contend with deadly traps, trickery, and dangerous monsters in order to save herself and the children. Imagine Hansel and Gretel, except far more terrifying.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) named Brian Jones’s book Black History Is for Everyone (Haymarket Books, 2025) as recipient of its 2026 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
“My aim was to offer educators and their students firmer footing in the crucial work of thinking and talking about Black history in their classrooms, particularly in this moment when their efforts are under such sustained assault,” Jones said. “I’m particularly honored to be associated with the legacy of George Orwell, whose powerful prose continues to shape the way we view the struggle for freedom and democracy.”
The NCTE Public Language Award Committee said of Black History Is for Everyone: “During a time when books from diverse voices are being removed from schools and restrictive policies are leading to narrow versions of historical learning, Jones shares a story of his personal journey of discovery as he investigates primary sources and pieces together essential knowledge about Black history, a history that he argues can challenge us to rethink the ways we see our world and our history. With the ethos of a Black male educator, Jones argues that learning an accurate, complex, nuanced, and more complete Black history can lead to liberation for everyone because it allows us opportunities to dream ‘with our eyes wide open’ of a world that can ‘transgress and transcend racial and national boundaries.’ This rich narrative highlights a critical argument for the importance of diving into the discomfort of learning where we can confront the realities of what it means to live and learn in this country.”
Jones is the senior director of reading and engagement at the New York Public Library, where he has worked for nearly a decade and also served as the inaugural director of NYPL’s Center for Educators and Schools….
(6) 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 #105: Kasey Lansdale.
Kasey Lansdale has been in the fiction world since birth as a writer, editor, audio book narrator, and creative professional. Lansdale is based in LA and currently serves as head editor at Pandi Press. She is also a known musician. As an author, she has released numerous short-stories and anthologies from publications such as Harper Collins, Titan Books, and more. Lansdale has had her fiction adapted for television and comics. First Chance is her debut novel.
She’s also a publicist at Tachyon Press and the daughter of Joe.
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
September 15, 1991 — Eerie, Indiana
You remember Joe Dante, who has served us such treats as the Gremlinfilms, a segment of the Twilight Zone: The Movie (“It’s A Good Life”) and, errr, Looney Tunes: Back in Action? (I’ll forgive him for that because he’s a consultant on HBO Max prequel series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. Anyone seen the latter?)
Dante also was the creative consultant and director on a weird little horror SF series called Eerie, Indiana which premiered thirty-four years ago on this evening on NBC. Yes, delightfully weird. It was created by José Rivera and Karl Schaefer. For both it would be their first genre undertaking, though they would have a starry future, their work including Eureka, that a favorite of mine until the extraordinary debacle of the last season, Goosebumps, The Jungle Book: Mowgli’s Story and Strange Luck to name but a few genre series that they’d work on in a major capacity.
Hardly anyone there is normal. Or even possibly of this time and space. We have super intelligent canines bent on global domination, a man who might be the Ahab, and, in this reality, Elvis never died, and Bigfoot is fond of the forest around this small town.
There’s even an actor doomed to keep playing the same role over and over and over again, that of a mummy. They break the fourth wall and get him into a much happier film. Tony Jay played this actor.
Yes, they broke the fourth wall. That would happen again in a major way that I won’t detail here.
It lasted but nineteen episodes as ratings were very poor.
Critics loved it. I’m quoting only one due to its length: “Scripted by Karl Schaefer and José Rivera with smart, sharp insights; slyly directed by feature film helmsman Joe Dante; and given edgy life by the show’s winning cast, Eerie, Indiana shapes up as one of the fall season’s standouts, a newcomer that has the fresh, bracing look of Edward Scissorhands and scores as a clever, wry presentation well worth watching.”
It won’t surprise you that at Rotten Tomatoes audience reviewers give it a rating of ninety-two percent. It is streaming on Amazon Prime, Disney+ and legally on YouTube. Yes, legally on the latter.
Wandering Planets Toys co-founders Gavin Hignight and Chris “Doc” Wyatt are teaming up once again for an all-new and entirely unexpected line of retro-style action figures, featuring the coolest, quirkiest space travelers ever known to the universe: The Planetoid Raiders! Who are these intergalactic aliens?… Each PLANETOID RAIDER is a lovingly designed tribute to classic scifi toys and a striking piece of contemporary art….
…Fans can find out now on the Kickstarter campaign for the PLANETOID RAIDERS! The figures in PLANETOID RAIDERS: Wave 1 will be available on retro-inspired card backs or pre-packed in a metal lunchbox-style collector’s case. Wandering Planet Toys will also be creating Planetoid Raiders baseball hats, and an 8 page “Sloog Interlude” mini-comic titled written by Chris “Doc” Wyatt with art by Chris Anderson (American Caper) available exclusively through the Kickstarter campaign.
WHO ARE THE PLANETOID RAIDERS?
NAME: OTON
POSITION: Captain of the Planetoid Raiders
HOME PLANET: Ontaria
FUN FACT: Otan is not sure exactly what captains are supposed to do.
NAME:RYOT
POSITION: Helmsman (and former space racer)
HOME PLANET: Kaaldor
FUN FACT: The others have no idea, but Ryot’s long since disabled the ship engine’s safety features.
NAME: BUZZ
POSITION: First Mate of the Planetoid Raiders
HOME PLANET: Also called “Buzz”
FUN FACT: Buzz is on all the apps.
NAME: SNATOON
POSITION: Celestial Cartographer for the Planetoid Raiders
HOME PLANET: Stanoonian Planetoid
FUN FACT: Snatoon doesn’t like your new haircut.
NAME:SLOOG
POSITION: Security Officer for the Planetoid Raiders
HOME PLANET: (too hard to pronounce) but translates to Slime World
FUN FACT: Sloog plays jazz on the sax when no one is looking.
In almost 30 countries, energy prospectors are hunting for a potential game changer in the quest to fight global warming. Their quarry is hydrogen gas trapped deep underground in hidden deposits. They hope to find big reservoirs of this geological hydrogen — substantial enough that the gas could become a green replacement for fossil fuels.
When hydrogen is burned to produce electricity, the only by-product is water vapour — no carbon dioxide is emitted. And the potential for geologic hydrogen has energy specialists buzzing. Since 2023, venture capitalists have invested nearly US$500 million in the search for deposits.
A 2024 analysis suggests that Earth’s subsurface probably contains tens of trillions of tonnes of the gas1. If even a small fraction can be recovered at a profit, geologic hydrogen could meet projected clean energy needs for 200 years, potentially at, or even below, the cost of fossil fuels. “That’s why it has gathered momentum as quickly as it has,” says Owain Jackson, head of hydrogen-exploration company H2Au, headquartered in Epsom, UK, which started drilling in Kansas in August.
Or all of this could be a pipe dream. Nobody knows whether there are large enough deposits of geological hydrogen to match the hype. That’s why companies are racing to drill into the ground in many geological formations, from northern Canada to eastern Africa to South Australia. Findings from these wells could emerge within the next few months, providing key clues about the potential for geologic hydrogen.
“At the moment, we still don’t know if it’s almost nothing or completely everywhere,” says David Waltham, a geophysicist at Royal Holloway, University of London….
(11)SF2 CONCATENTION AUTUMN 2026.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The autumnal edition of SF² Concatenation is now up. Its contents are below…
v36(5) 2026.9.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Autumn 2026
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, JJ, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
