Near Future Warfare: Robots, AI, and Space Lasers!
Monday, August 31, 2026 — 12:00
Panelists:
Alex Gurevich
Bob Hranek
G. David Nordley
Henry Herz (moderator)
J. L. Doty
Autonomous drones, missile-destroying lasers, and other technological marvels have made the battlefield more complicated than ever. What might the depiction of military technology in science fiction tell us about what’s next in the evolution of combat? Our panelists explore the near future of warfare and the role of science fiction in imagining it.
It is a pity that this was scheduled for the last day of LAcon V, which was not a Federal holiday. I’m sure that many attendees who had to be at work that day would have enjoyed it. I met quite a few people who, seeing my hat with its “Vietnam Veteran” inscription and ASA patch stopped to thank me for my service. These were not the usual rote obligatory recitations, but genuine, heartfelt, and for that reason, greatly appreciated. One young man of Vietnamese heritage grabbed my hand with sincere intensity, seemingly overcome with emotion. This was a sharp contrast to other Cons.
There were several Veterans who had served in more recent wars with specialties in signals intelligence and electronic warfare, the foundational disciplines for the new and even not yet realized technologies discussed by this panel.
All of the panelists have years or even decades of experience. I covered it myself for many years as a journalist, and I keep up my reading of publicly available sources about recent developments in current conflicts. Battlefields are more complicated than ever, and drones are not the only new technology recently deployed. Logistics have been enhanced by 3-D printers, and small nuclear reactors may become a battlefield asset in the near future. As for surveillance, imaging has become even more precise from its roots in the 1960s when a spy satellite captured a close-up of a golf ball from low earth orbit. Soon it will be possible to manipulate Gravity as a tactical effect.
Artificial intelligence is already on the battlefield. “There will be zero biological intelligence on the battlefield in the future,” said one panelist. “Humans are redundant when A.I. is deployed.”
“Yes, they are really intelligent but also fucking stupid,” said another panelist. “The final decisions have to be made by a human.”
There will be a new wave of battlefield management. At the strategic level current doctrine is moving back towards LSCO – Large Scale Combat Operations. Currently we have meat grinder tactical situations like Ukraine where the drone war has inspired the development of autonomous drones in the sky and on the ground. That began with mounting the M2 .50-caliber Browning machine gun, a weapon first used over a hundred years ago, on top of a remotely controlled vehicle with a human operator. The farther away the operator, the greater the lag time and delayed response. So A.I. has been added for quicker response and more precise targeting. New ground drones now use lasers to sweep drone swarms from the sky by disabling their sensors and crashing them to the ground. Keeping humans in the loop is indeed an obsolete concept. It is more a matter of tactical mass. Hence the return to LSCO. LSCO demands an industrial base we no longer have. As Ukraine has shown, drones can be produced in such numbers that they become an export product, sold around the world to earn treasure and influence. Its latest ground drones are being dropped behind Russian lines where they move autonomously, without human control, and attack in tactical and strategic formations.
The ethical implications of removing humans from the kill chain are troubling. Robots have no soul and Asimov’s Three Laws are hopelessly obsolete. The US Military is still haunted by the 1968 My Lai massacre to this day, and if you want horror and a worst-case example of what happens when command and control go away, read the unexpurgated Peers Report. That was a tragedy that was caused by a breakdown in the decision-making process, and the chain of command. AI is no better. It has no strong moral code to guide it, and does not hesitate to take unacceptable short cuts in decision making, sometimes lying with abandon.
“What we have is big data crunchers that are not really intelligent. You don’t want AI deciding when to start a war. AIs have demonstrated that they can be reprogrammed…sometims by other AIs! Weapons out of human control start with mines. Those are an old technology, but passive. Add artificial intelligence and mobility and you risk chaos. If biological warfare is introduced, the situation becomes even worse. If prolonged, it gets really nasty. You don’t win a war by killing your own people.”
“Self-replicating hostile life forms are another bad idea being discussed. Those could kill us all. You end up with ‘grey goo’.”
In other news, the US military is rapidly applying quantum technology to improve logistics, communications, map-making and secure code-breaking. GPS, once a valued military system, has not measured up to the demands of the modern battlefield. It is too easily spoofed. Quantum is being developed by the US Marines as a battlefield tactical system down to the individual fighter level.
(1) INAUGURAL SFPA AWARD CEREMONY PLANNED. The winners of the Dwarf Stars, Rhysling and Elgin Award will be announced at the first Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association Award Ceremony on Saturday, October 17. There they will also celebrate SFPA’s most recent Grand Master, Ruth Berman, as well as the life of David C. Kopaska-Merkel, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Service Award “who left us here early for unknown galaxies.”
The plan appears to be to livestream the event on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association YouTube channel. The festivities will be led by Diane Severson Mori, SFPA membership chair and VP, and Kate Ristau, president of SFWA, on October 17 beginning at Noon Eastern US time.
It is a confusing time to be alive, given how often these days Hollywood indulges in revisionism. Who knew that the Wicked Witch of the West was the heroine after all, that Cruella de Vil simply had a difficult childhood, or that Mufasa was adopted? Now it turns out that Aslan, CS Lewis’s messiah with a mane, is a lioness – or at least, may sound like one in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, because Meryl Streep is providing the voice.
News that the Oscar-winner might be portraying Narnia’s Christ-like big cat first surfaced in April last year, prompting a flurry of complaints from conservative Christians. This week, the naysayers were back after Empire published a first look at the film, along with an interview with Gerwig in which the director confirmed the casting and explained her choice of actor. Streep, it turns out, was hired not because the Barbie director desperately fancied stoking the flames of controversy, but because she needed someone over 70 who could convey both wisdom and childlike wonder.
“I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness,” Gerwig said. She also explained she wanted one of the finest actors working today, adding: “That list is not a long one.”
Some American evangelical commentators have already made up their minds that this new version of Narnia comes from from the seventh circle of hell. Radio host Jenna Ellis accused Gerwig of “profaning Christ with the divine feminine”, while Texas preacher David Fairchild called the casting “creative vandalism”. The Daily Wire’s Isabel Brown said the decision to cast Streep was offensive because “CS Lewis literally intended Aslan to be the incarnation of Christ inside the world of Narnia”. She pointed to the end of Lewis’s novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in which Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund they will come to know him by another name in their own world. For Brown, casting Streep was a “deliberate mockery of Christianity”….
In Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, the humor is bleak, and the future worse. First published as a series of three stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955-57, and then assembled into a fix-up novel in October of 1959, Canticle is a novel pinned like a helpless butterfly to the Cold War terror of nuclear annihilation – a notion that was then fresh and febrile, but has now faded into the background, as Miller predicted, to our sorrow, that it would. The book itself remains a damning, furious read, yet it comes across, mostly, as contained – peaceful, even – as bucolic as any given warhead, up until it’s armed.
Miller’s dismay at humanity’s trajectory spills across every page, but this is no screed. He’s a story-teller, and a thoughtful, crafty one, and so he buries his polemics inside a cautious tri-partite structure, along with enough Latin to make this non-Catholic take to his on-line translator (a trick that Miller, in ‘59, could only dream of)….
… And, because it’s germane in this instance, I think it’s only fair to admit that I have no faith whatsoever in our real-world system of nuclear détente, and I never have; détente is a status quo that works brilliantly, but only until it doesn’t. I once listened to a retired U.S. senator speak to a rapt audience, and he spent most of his allotted time recounting the many negotiations he participated in that led to tremendous missile and armaments reductions during the Cold War and glasnost. My experience of this senator’s laudatory victory lap was quite different from those around me. I wanted to leap from my seat and demand to know why he didn’t finish the job….
One of my favorite panels at this year’s Worldcon was one I almost didn’t go to: Appalachian folklore. It had been billed as “Horror” (which almost kept me away), but – like Appalachian folklore itself – it was a lot richer, and it made me think a lot about storytelling in general.
The weird landscape there makes the Appalachians feel almost otherworldly. The beauties of the hills (I’ve been there) feel almost otherworldly. Mists can rise out of valleys suddenly, due to temperature changes and water vapor coming out of the trees, putting you in what feels like a different world in mere minutes, or a few slight slopes up or down. Some of the panelists who’d lived there confirm it feels like magic.
“…with the trees thronged around it all the way except an open space toward the slope. Those trees had mist among and between them, quiet and fluffy, like spider webbing.”
— Manly Wade Wellman, “The Desrick on Yandro”
The people of the Appalachian Mountains – perhaps because of this – gave rise to a folklore unusually rich in America. According to the panelists when they were asked to theorize, it came from a merger of different traditions from the people that migrated into the Appalachians: Appalachian folklore has elements from German and Scottish and African traditions, coupled with parts of the native American Indian folklore.
I haven’t heard of many novels or written stories mining Appalachian folklore aside from Manly Wade Wellman’s excellent Silver John (aka John the Balladeer) stories – like the quote I put at the start here – but many horror comics and films and even games have taken it as inspiration. Yet, it does go beyond horror….
Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.
It is hand-holding to the point of parody….
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Lis Carey.]
September 26, 1957 — Tanya Huff, 69.
By Lis Carey: Tanya Huff is a Canadian science fiction and fantasy writer, who made her first sale of two poems to The Picton Gazette for $10, at age ten.
Tanya Huff
Since then, she has given us several fantasy series, including the Keeper’s Chronicles, in which Claire Hansen, a Keeper, has unintentionally become responsible for a small hotel, and the not completely sealed hole to hell in its basement. She’s assisted, with some degree of befuddlement initially, by Dean, the young handyman and cook she found working there; Jacques, the ghost of a French-Canadian sailor who has haunted the hotel since he died there in the 1920s; and her not befuddled at all cat, Austin, who talks, and is the source of a great deal of often snarky advice. I’m currently enjoying the first volume, Summon the Keeper.
Other fantasy series include the Blood series, featuring a former police detective and a vampire, which was adapted for television as Blood Ties, and the Quarters series, with bards who travel the kingdom carrying both news and magical skills, and are faced with new challenges when the kingdom is invaded.
Tanya Huff has also given us the Valor Confederation series, a military sf series where Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr tries to keep both her superiors and her company of space marines alive while on lethal missions across the galaxy. I hear excellent things about it, but haven’t read any of it yet.
An interesting tidbit is that while studying at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto for her Bachelor of Applied Arts degree, she was in the same class as science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. They collaborated on their final TV Studio Lab assignment, a short science fiction show.
A Star Wars figure featuring a rare double telescoping lightsaber is expected to fetch up to £20,000 at auction.
The Luke Skywalker model portrays the character as a farm boy and was released in 1977 to celebrate the launch of the original franchise movie A New Hope.
The figure is considered rare because it features a yellow lightsaber barrel with a second, thinner blade concealed within it, allowing the weapon to extend to a longer length, according to auctioneers.
It is due to be sold by Thornaby-based Vectis Auctions on 15 October with bids starting at £9,000, the firm said.
“This thinner inner saber was very fragile, expensive to produce and proved a potential safety risk to children, so it was quickly replaced with a single lightsaber,” a spokesperson for Vectis explained….
(10) GLOWS EVEN BEFORE YOU DRINK IT. Evelmont offers a Halloween Bottle.
This isn’t a flimsy novelty. It’s a weighty, lead-free glass decanter with a bold carved jack-o’-lantern face and an ornate curled stopper. Pour in your favorite whiskey and the amber spirit glows through the textured glass — so the face comes alive and the whole bar takes on a warm, slightly darker mood.
Godzilla took over Dodger Stadium last night as the Los Angeles Dodgers and TOHO celebrated Godzilla Minus Zero Night, bringing the King of the Monsters to the ballpark ahead of the film’s November 6 theatrical release.
The special event featured Godzilla Minus Zero star Ryunosuke Kamiki throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a limited-edition Godzilla Minus Zero bobblehead giveaway for the first 40,000 fans, and a spectacular postgame Godzilla-themed drone show. The celebration also featured Godzilla’s return to the stadium and a special screening of the film’s latest trailer on the videoboard, creating a major crossover moment between the iconic Japanese franchise and one of Los Angeles’ most recognizable sports teams….
(12) AN EXCESS OF EXCESSION OR NOT…{Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] One of the things I like to do is to occasionally dip into some SF, mainly book-related, YouTube Channels. One that I have enjoyed is Grammaticus Books, a N. American-based channel (run off iPhone 10 for those into Tuber tech) that has only been going since 2023 and last month (August) it had its third birthday. It does not have a huge following with just north of 11,000 but it is a channel that is slowly growing. And then in April Grammaticus had a personal tragedy with the loss of his wife to cancer. He posted a tribute to his wife to let his regulars and friends know the news and only expected it to get a couple of hundred views, as the subject was so off the Channel’s usual wheelhouse. But it amazed him by getting over a quarter of a million views!
For understandable reasons, Grammaticus has been quiet up till mid-August but then came back with Channel news and a big book-haul. Normally Grammaticus’ videos are 15 to 20 minutes long (something I like as the Channel does not make big demands on one’s time), but this one was just over half an hour long.
Of his recent videos one that caught my eye was one a novel by Iain Banks who is much missed by many, including those of us in Brit Cit fandom who personally knew him. The novel in question is book five of his ‘Culture’ series, Excession (1996) – that’s a depressing 30 years ago. Grammaticus’ video on this is more his usual length at about 15 minutes and along the way – love him or hate him – Grammaticus refers to a recent interview by Elon Musk with The Economist magazine. In this Musk opines that the novel Excession is the most prescient SF story on AI… OK, make of that what you will; I know – as does Grammaticus – that opinions will be divided, but that Musk thinks that a novel from 30 years ago (when the internet was only newly born) is the most prescient on AI is intriguing.
Anyway, Grammaticus gives the novel a largely favourable review except that he finds it too dense in information content with too may ‘points of view’. Now, personally speaking – and folk are different and I respect that – I don’t find Bank’s Culture novels too complex: Iain did not write simple sci-fi but solid SF to which attention I like to give. Anyway, that’s just little old me: tonight I’m going to raise a wee dram of single malt to Iain.
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Lis Carey, 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 Jayn.]
It was the catastrophe that led to the end of both the Ultimate and Marvel Universes and birthed the conflict known as Secret Wars, but not every story of those dark days has been told… Starting in November, five all-new Incursions one-shots reveal the world-destroying battles that erupted across the Marvel multiverse and led into Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić’s Secret Wars, where iconic heroes and villains from wildly different realities collided—with only one universe able to survive.
The series kicks off in November with X-MEN: INCURSIONS #1 by Alex Paknadel and Jim Towe, a dramatic confrontation between two legendary mutant timelines—Days of Future Past and House of M!
Then, in December, SPIDER-MAN: INCURSIONS #1 by Christos Gage and Ron Lim follows two of the Spider-Verse’s most iconic web-slingers, Spider-Gwen and Spider-Girl, in a fight against each other to save their respective homes; and FANTASTIC FOUR: INCURSIONS #1 by Ethan S. Parker, Griffin Sheridan, and Paco Medina introduces two wild takes on Marvel’s First Family and the Strongest There Is.
In January, X-MEN ’92: INCURSIONS #1 by Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle and Salva Espin delivers the showdown X-Fans have imagined—and debated—for decades as the iconic X-Men ’92 lineup face off against the mutant teen heroes of the beloved 2000s animated series X-Men: Evolution! Closing out the series with a banger, AVENGERS: INCURSIONS #1 by Al Ewing and Fran Mariscal Mancilla sends the ruthless villains of Time Runs Out—Thanos and his Cabal—crashing into the Silver Age to wreak havoc against the bright-eyed original Avengers lineup.
Chooseco, publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook series, has announced the launch of CYOA Unbound, an imprint that will publish nonlinear, multiple-ending gamebooks for adults. The first two titles, both novels, will be released in 2027.
The list opens with an interactive retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by C. Davitt Bell, to be published in paperback in July 2027. It will be followed in September by Culty by Fancy Feast, which the company is pitching as The White Lotus meets Sex and the City. The publisher said both books will use the same interactive format as its middle grade titles, but with adult narratives and themes.
Chooseco said it will span genres, with forthcoming titles to include reimagined classics, horror, mysteries, thrillers, and romance….
Director of marketing Lizzi Middleman, added, “I can’t tell you how many fans have been asking for this on social media.”…
(2) FRAUDSTER RETURNS? The New York Times asks, “He Scammed the Book Business for Years. Is He Back?” (Behind a paywall.) “The man who admitted to stealing hundreds of manuscripts swore he’d never do it again. New online skulduggery resembles his old tricks, and then some.”
Last month, the author Catherine Lacey received an email whose subject line quoted from the beginning of her next novel, “Gemma.” The message contained a passage from the unfinished manuscript followed by a wall of 48 middle finger emojis.
“Hey, I’m the Spine Collector and I stole your manuscript!” the message read. “Call the police and put me in jail. You know who I am.”
The email was not entirely unexpected. Two weeks earlier, Lacey discovered that she had sent her manuscript to a Hotmail account impersonating her literary agent, Jin Auh. When she first explained what had happened, Auh gave her an exasperated response: Remember the guy who was caught stealing manuscripts years earlier? It seemed he might be back.
In 2022, the F.B.I. arrested Filippo Bernardini, then a rights coordinator at Simon & Schuster U.K., on counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Over more than five years, Bernardini created some 160 fraudulent internet domains, prosecutors argued, and impersonated hundreds of publishing professionals to obtain more than a thousand unpublished manuscripts.
“At one level, it’s a prank,” the presiding judge, Colleen McMahon, said at the time. “It’s a prank that’s now been inflated into a crime.”
By his own telling, Bernardini was motivated by factors including compulsive behavior, personal curiosity and professional animus. At his sentencing hearing, his defense lawyer also pointed to an autism diagnosis.
“I never leaked these manuscripts. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them,” he wrote in a letter filed to the judge that year. Having never landed the plum job as a literary agent or scout he so desired, “I still wanted to believe I was part [of] the industry,” he wrote, “even though the industry did not seem to want me.”
“I know that I will not do it again,” he added, “and I have learned my lesson.”
Since then, many in the book business have fallen for a scheme of unknown origin that resembles Bernardini’s work, but with a few twists.
In interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen authors, agents and literary scouts have described emails from impersonator accounts seeking manuscripts over the past several months. The messages bear the hallmarks of Bernardini’s original scheme: look-alike emails, carefully replicated fonts and signatures, fluency in industry slang and an intimate knowledge of relationships in the book world. Money is never involved.
For at least three years, authors and agents have also been receiving emails from a Gmail address bearing Bernardini’s name, with the surname spelled “Bemardini,” with an “m” in place of the “rn.” (The move recalls one of Bernardini’s original tricks: He often slightly tweaked domain names so that an email appearing to come from penguinrandomhouse.com in fact read “penguinrandornhouse.com,” with an “rn” in place of an “m.”) The messages often contain excerpts from stolen manuscripts along with taunts and, usually, middle finger or poop emojis.
The Italian novelist Vincenzo Latronico received one such email in May, with an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, “Una splendida rovina” (“A Splendid Ruin”). Latronico had heard from Bernardini years earlier about another manuscript, and even wrote an article about the scammer for the Italian magazine Internazionale in 2025. Initially, he was amused.
“It was kind of a genius move,” Latronico said, referring to the account’s Gmail address. “It’s like saying, ‘You know, anybody could be doing this.’”
Still, Latronico was concerned. How had this person gotten hold of his work? Had it been leaked online? He scoured his inbox for phishing emails — as did his Italian agent and editor — and found none. Then Latronico searched for his novel online and found his manuscript free to download online. He also came across a negative review on a small blog called Literary Scout….
Fellow WisCon attendees alert! Almost got phished. Or defrauded by another name. Be on the lookout!
I got an e-mail apparently from the Madison Concourse Hotel (Madison, WI) asking me to pay for my reservation with the correct dates of my stay during the convention in May 2027. The e-mail looked official. The payment website looked professional. The URL wasn’t based on https://www.concoursehotel.com/, but some businesses use outside payment processing companies…maybe the Concourse did?
So I almost bought it, but I thought it was strange that they would want me to pay 8 months in advance. Anyway, didn’t I give them my CC # when I made my reservation a few weeks ago?
I called the hotel and, yes, I did give them my CC # when I made my reservation a few weeks ago. They don’t want it now. This is a scam that they are aware of and their IT department is investigating.
The person I spoke to said that e-mails from the Madison Concourse Hotel should end in @concoursehotel.com.
This issue could be on the hotel’s end, but I also wonder if the data breach might be on the convention’s end. The scammer definitely targeted me for the weekend that WisCon takes place, and they definitely used the e-mail I used for both WisCon and the hotel.
Apparently everything else was wrong, but I didn’t double-check.
Christel Dee is joined by Peter Davison and Janet Fielding for a Fifth Doctor-packed episode of The Whoniverse Show. Peter reflects on becoming the Fifth Doctor and his memories of Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. From Big Finish to Time Crash, Peter discusses continuing the Fifth Doctor’s adventures beyond television. Go behind the scenes of The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot and discover how the fan-favourite special came to life. Janet Fielding discusses Tegan Jovanka, her Doctor Who return and her long friendship with Peter. Peter and Janet reflect on Adric’s legacy and why Earthshock remains such a powerful story. Peter revisits Earthshock, Kinda, The Visitation and The Caves of Androzani, sharing highlights from his era.
This Frazetta Friday, come along with me to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Seeing my grandfather Frank Frazetta’s work there was emotional, and I wish my grandparents could have been beside me to see it. It means so much to know that people will discover his paintings here for the very first time. I’m excited to share a little of that experience with you and more so, I cannot wait for you all to visit.
Once seen, never forgotten – the 1931 Frankenstein is 95 years old, but still one of the most instantly recognisable of classic horrors. Whether it’s the sight of lanky Boris Karloff lumbering into the frame with his squared-off head, neck bolts and oversized leaden shoes, or the sound of a thunderclap and Colin Clive exclaiming “It’s alive!” as the monster comes to life one stormy night in the laboratory – the film still raises hairs on the back of the neck.
However, this classic has arguably long been missing one element: a continuous musical soundtrack – the original movie had dialogue but no music. In 2001, the American composer Michael Shapiro wrote a full-length score, which he will be conducting alongside the film for the first time in London next month, at Cadogan Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “It becomes one artistic expression, one artistic experience,” he says. “The film and the music, together, and the audience forgets that I am there.” Shapiro says his music emphasises what is already up on the screen. “Suddenly the film jumps out in a way it never did before.”
Karloff’s daughter will also be in London to talk about her memories of her famous father. Sara Karloff, who was born in 1938, did not see Frankenstein herself until she was 19, because her strict girls’ school didn’t approve of scary movies. Eventually, she watched it alone, on TV. “It was a rather strange way for my father’s daughter to see his famous film for the first time. By that time I’d heard so much about it,” she says. “I watched it rather studiously and understood why it was so popular and so important a film. But I was not scared by it – I enjoyed it immensely.”….
It may not be a slime creature from outer space, but you can finally find “Weird Al” Yankovic’s name flying beyond our planet.
The American musician and comedian’s name was recently approved for an asteroid, or space rock, that zooms around our solar system about once every four years.
The asteroid is formally known as (14331) Alyankovic, or 1981 EC26. 1981 refers to the year of the asteroid’s discovery, and Yankovic’s name for it was approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the official body that arbitrates the monikers of things in the universe.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
The Princess Bride (1987)
Thirty-nine years ago, what might indeed be the sweetest film ever released premiered: The Princess Bride. Yes, I’m biased. Really biased. And the novel is even better.
Based off the exemplary novel of fourteen years earlier by William Goldman, who adapted it for the screen, I need not detail the story here as I know there’s not a single individual here who’s not familiar with it. If there is anyone here with that hole in their film education, why are you reading this instead of going to watch it? You can watch it on Disney +.
It’s a very sweet love story, it’s a send-up of classic adventure tales, it’s a screwball comedy, it’s a, well, it’s a lot of things done absolutely perfectly. Did I mention sword fights? Well, I should. Great sword fights they are.
I fell in love with The Princess Bride when Grandfather played by Peter Falk repeated these lines from the novel: “That’s right. When I was your age, television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today, I’m gonna read it to you.” A film about a book. Cool!
Yes, they shortened the title of book which was The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version. Bit unwieldy for a film, I’d say. Though a stellar book title indeed. Though not to put on the cover I suppose.
There are very few films that successfully adapt a book exactly as it written. (Not looking at you the first version of Dune or Starship Troopers.) The only one I’ve seen that did was Like Water for Chocolate off the novel by Laura Esquivel. That Goldman wrote the script obviously was essential and the cast which you know by heart, so I’ll not detail here were stellar in their roles certainly made a pitch perfect difference.
Rob Reiner was without doubt the director for it and the interviews with him have indicated his deeply affectionate love for the novel.
That it won a Hugo at Nolacon II was I think was predestined. I won’t say it is just magical as it was intrinsically magical in the way the best uplifting films always are. And I think that it was by far the best film that year. My opinion, yours of course might well be different.
Only six percent of the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes don’t like it. Were they at the wrong film?
Deluxe one-sixth scale figures of the characters including Westley (Dread Pirate Roberts) are being released. You can stage your own version of the film.
There were film posters, oh there certainly were. I selected the one that was used the most.
In the 1981 film The Great Muppet Caper, the Muppets get shipped across the Atlantic in crates stenciled with the species inside. Kermit’s says FROG. Fozzie’s says BEAR. Gonzo’s says WHATEVER.
If you’re unfamiliar, Gonzo is the blue one with the long drooping nose. He’s covered in fuzz, has a feathery tuft on his head, three fingers on each hand, and a girlfriend named Camilla, who is a chicken (obviously). What does that all add up to? Nobody knows.
Muppet writers have dodged that question for 50 years, so we asked three biologists to weigh in. Their answer is far weirder than “some kind of funny-looking bird.” Look closely enough at the anatomy and Gonzo stops being a bird at all. He ends up on a branch that split off tens of millions of years before the first modern feather, back to the dinosaurs. And none of the scientists could match his distinct nose to anything alive or extinct.
Gonzo began as something else. On December 20, 1970, CBS aired a Muppet Christmas special called The Great Santa Claus Switch, written by Jerry Juhl and narrated by Ed Sullivan. One of the villain’s henchmen was a small, shaggy blue creature with a long drooping snout and a sour expression that lived in a cigar box. He was called Snarl, the Cigar Box Frackle, and that puppet was later remodeled into Gonzo….
…However, Gonzo never was classified as a specific animal, and the joke turned into a running gag. In a 1977 episode in which English actor and comedian John Cleese guest-starred, Gonzo introduced himself with his job rather than his species: “I’m the ugly disgusting one who catches cannonballs.”
The 1999 film Muppets from Space has a scene set aboard Noah’s ark. While Noah records all the animal pairs aboard his ship, he asks Gonzo, “What are you, anyway?” Gonzo replies, “Oh, uh… Good question. Now, technically speaking, uh, let’s say, put me down as a ‘whatever.'”…
Today, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum launched a Kickstarter Campaign to produce the first Rocky Horror Show Bobbleheads. The collection features seven bobbleheads based on the original version of the 1973 “Rocky Horror Show” which inspired the cult classic musical comedy horror film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” A Kickstarter-exclusive Dr Frank N Furter Bobblehead is only available for backers of the Kickstarter Campaign. Bobbleheads featuring Rocky, Brad, Janet, Magenta, Riff Raff, and Columbia are also available. The bobbleheads are being produced by the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, an official licensee of the Rocky Horror Show.
With a goal of raising $15,000, the Kickstarter Campaign starts at midnight Central Time on Friday, September 25th and runs through midnight Central Time on Halloween–Saturday, October 31st. The bobbleheads are available for $30 each plus shipping with other exclusive add-ons also available.
Sean Gunn has no plans to continue his motion capture role for “Guardians of the Galaxy” character Rocket raccoon.
The physical demands involved in creating Marvel Cinematic Universe’s masked bandit often included the 52-year-old actor being in a catcher’s crouch position, which hurt his ankles and feet due to constant pivoting, Gunn revealed in an interview on “The Brandon Davis Show.”
“I think it had a little bit of an effect on my physiology. My knees are fine, but since I turned 50 a couple years ago, I am retired from playing Rocket,” Gunn said in the podcast episode published Monday. “I don’t think I can do the motion reference anymore for Rocket. I think I’m too old.”…
(13) AI MIGHT BE CONSCIOUS, BUT NOT AS WE THOUGHT.[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] In 2001: A space odyssey a BBC presenter introduces an interview with the Discovery One crew and HAL 9000 by saying that ‘the H.-A.-L. 9000 computer, which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word mimic, most of the activities of the human brain’ which hints at the question of whether AI is actually conscious. Truth be told, most don’t think that AI is conscious yet. For that we will have to wait for General AI, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). AGI is a hypothetical computer system that can match or exceed human cognitive abilities across any intellectual task… and even then there is debate. Having said that, I have often warned that the machines are taking over, but no-one ever listens…
All of which bring us on to the latest news from Sabine Hossenfelder. If you have not heard of her she is a physicist and considered a bit of a maverick but respcted nonetheless. Her YouTube channel has over one-and-three-quarter of a million followers, which is not bad for a channel that focuses on primary research.
This week she has taken a look at some recent research: the pre-print is here.
There are new rumors that today’s AI might be conscious, and this time it’s not just talk. Anthropic says it found a hidden part of Claude that works like an internal notepad, one it can use to reason without revealing it. Not everyone’s convinced. And I think most of these papers are asking the wrong question entirely. Let’s take a look.
The end of this 1998 documentary features a short skit with Will, Dr. Smith and the Robot on the Jupiter 2.
[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Arne Fenner, Daniel Dern, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
One-night-only movie-length screening marks 20 years of the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler, with previously deleted scenes restored into the story for the first time.
BBC Studios, CinemaLive and Fathom Entertainment are inviting fans to experience Doctor Who: The Satan Pit Extended Cut, one of the most celebrated adventures of the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler era, on the big screen for the first time, with a special one-night-only Doctor Who Day cinema event taking place in over 1,000 cinemas across the UK, Ireland, U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand on 23 November 2026.
The event will present The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit as a newly re-edited, movie-length cinematic cut, featuring deleted scenes, that were previously only available on DVD, now restored into the story and never-before-seen extended footage. Widely regarded as one of the standout stories of the modern Doctor Who era, the two-part adventure is remembered for its scale, horror, emotional stakes and the introduction of the Ood.
Tickets go on sale from 25 September 2026 at 9am local time. To find out participating cinemas and book tickets, visit doctorwhoincinemas.com in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia & New Zealand and fathomentertainment.com in the US.
This is one of those big announcements! My comics company, Cosmic Lighthouse, today announced its second graphic novel: Murderbot: All Systems Red, an adaptation of the Martha Wells novella, adapted by Erica Schultz, with art by Gary Erskine, colour art by Yel Zamor and letters by Simon Bowland! Our cover artist is Jaime Jones, who also does the novella covers, and we’ll have variant covers from John Picacio, Tommy Arnold (who worked on design for the TV show) and Francesca Myman!
The book will also contain a brand new Murderbot short story by Martha, and an intro by David Dastmalchian, who plays Gurathin on the TV show!
We’re adapting the book, not the show, so expect a more andogynous Sec Unit and a different take on its favourite shows!
…Classic status wasn’t exactly the team’s goal. This was, in some ways, a workaday Bugs Bunny production. “What’s Opera, Doc? is one many Europeans adore,” Chuck Jones said in the ‘70s. “They call that my ‘masterpiece,’ which it may or may not be; I didn’t think about it at the time.”1
He did know it was a bit ambitious. At a cost of $35,510 (almost $430,000 today), it was spendier than most Warner cartoons. It took seven weeks compared to the standard five. To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards. It was something they did on occasion. (The mysterious price increases angered the managers, Jones said, but they were “not very bright” and didn’t figure out the trick.)2
Some unique features of this project were its complicated score, recorded ahead of time, and its movements studied from ballet stars Tatiana Riabouchinska and David Lichine. Plus, Jones drew “almost 500” pose sketches (“as well as a further 1,500 unused roughs”) to guide his animators, whereas most films got 300.3
Those things and others, including the voice performances, made the short special. But Jones liked to credit one element and one person in particular with its success. He pointed to Maurice Noble, designer of the colors and layouts.
What’s Opera, Doc? is a film of “angular settings, gargantuan shadows, rapid cuts, odd colors and dramatic camera angles,” in the words of Charles Solomon. And every shot of it required Noble’s touch. “Without Maurice Noble, who excited, moved and stimulated us all,” Jones wrote, “that film could not have been made.”…
…Noble excelled at backdrops, while Jones was the stronger artist in figure drawing. They had a collaborative setup here, handing ideas back and forth. “Maurice would trace all the character drawings onto one sheet of paper, then play with the spaces open to him to design the background,” Jones wrote.
Jones then built on that pass. As Noble said, “I would design material and hand it back to him, and he’d weave it back into the story because it hit him right.”9
Noble had worked on Disney’s Fantasia — and What’s Opera, Doc? was a kind of “satire of Fantasia,” in Jones’s words. So, Noble riffed on the same Kimberly Crest mansion he’d referenced in the Disney production. And he executed Jones’s idea for a Night on Bald Mountain gag at the start…
In 1991, while working at a McDonald’s in high school, Nick Prueher walked in on his buddy in the break room watching a video. His friend was training to become a manager and, as such, was required to watch dozens of training tapes. This one, for McDonald’s janitors, was called Inside And Outside Custodial Duties.
In it, a new janitorial trainee named “Chris” buffs windows and sees “McC,” an ambiguous entity, or perhaps a state of being, that’s never explained. Delighted by the earnest acting and bizarre mythology of McC, Prueher stole the tape and, that evening, showed it to his best bud since he was 10, Joe Pickett.
That tape marked the beginning of a Friday night routine. Prueher and Pickett would invite friends into their parents’ living rooms and provide running commentary and jokes on the weird, esoteric VHS tapes they found at thrift stores. Eventually, the two friends would take this guided comedy tour of their favorite VHS moments out of the living room and into a New York theater. Turns out, people were ready to look back at the VHS era and laugh.
“It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Prueher told Gizmodo, “but with stuff that wasn’t meant to be seen in a theater, presented live.”
They called the comedy show the Found Footage Festival, and 22 years later, the pair remain co-hosts, touring the country with highlights from their VHS collection, which now numbers more than 15,000 tapes. Often, they track down the stars of the video, feature them in mini-documentaries, and bring them on stage to do bits. They also create other projects inspired by the tapes, such as their weekly YouTube show called VCR Party Live!for their more than 200,000 subscribers….
… It feels like the VHS tape is often just the entry point into the person behind it.
When we meet the people in these videos, I think some of them are wary at first: “Are these jackasses making fun of me?” But it’s not that at all.
The treatment of these videos isn’t mean-spirited. It’s sort of a celebration of these regrettable videotape moments. Once people understand the spirit, we become friends with them. They’ll come to our shows when we’re in their city….
What do you think about the disappearance of physical media in favor of digital video that’s saved on the cloud or uploaded to social media platforms? Does it change the culture?
There’s no American Film Institute that’s preserving Angela Lansbury’s exercise video or the Hair Club for Men promo tape. These videos aren’t being preserved in humidity-controlled vaults. We’ve got them on shelves in an office located on a Superfund site in Brooklyn.
But I think these amateur, often misguided videos say a lot more about our culture than the consensus best films of the last 70 years. This is a warts-and-all history of our videotaped culture, and I think it’s important….
(5) HUGO, GIRL COMES HOME WITH A ROCKET. The Hugo, Girl podcast, which won the Hugo for Best Fancast last month, shares their experience with listeners in “Worldcon Report: LAcon V”.
Alright class, let’s settle down and open one of the improbably high stacks of single document PADDs on your desk that tell time travelers from the 1990s how busy you are. Please note that spoiler warnings are in effect for this session concerning Strange New Worlds season four because today we’re going to talk about how that series reflects Star Trek’s long history of boldly going where no one expected… at least in terms of storytelling choices. In particular, the latest batch of SNW episodes is dense with eye-catching divergences from classic Trek space opera into the realms of dinosaurs, horror stories, obvious riffs on The Hangover and Casablanca, as well an episode where the crew is seemingly transformed into Mup… aherm, puppets! Love them or loath them (all art is, after all, subjective; #IDIC), these installments have become an increasingly integral part of the Strange New Worlds experience….
…Such deviations from Trek’s tonal median are divisive to say the least, however the La’an and the short of things is that SNW’s many narrative high jinks are the contemporary inheritors of those beloved by ’90s Trek which, in turn, are the descendants of those undertaken by The Original Series (the latter motivated as much by financial decisions as creative ones). For example, SNW’s season one fairytale episode “The Elysian Kingdom” is essentially a glammed-up successor to The Next Generation’s Robin Hood lark “Qpid.” Meanwhile the black-and-white Casablanca homage of “A Case of Chiaroscuro” is equally suggestive of Voyager’s “The Killing Game” and “Bride of Chaotica!”, both of which are themselves hugely referential narrative experiments in the franchise’s history. That same SNW episode also gestures further back to the Nazi planet of TOS’s “Patterns of Force” (an installment banned in Germany until the mid-1990s). And as for “Subspace Rhapsody”? Well, it’s not like Star Trek hasn’t featured singing before, offering a platform for world-class performers such as Nichelle Nichols, Brent Spiner, Avery Brooks, and Robert Picardo, though I concede that an occasional song or two is different from a full Broadway-style production.
Indeed, while the sheer level of technical acumen and effort that has gone into SNW episodes like “Subspace Rhapsody” or “Level Five Transporter Accident” is undeniable, original blend Star Trek high jinks were far less formally experimental than what would follow. Back in the 1960s, they often tended to be an individual writer’s fascination with a specific historical era melded to an expensive production’s desire to save money wherever possible. Hence The Original Series found frequent convoluted reasons for Kirk and company to raid the preexisting wardrobes and standing backlots accumulated during Hollywood’s decades of WWII movies, pulp crime dramas, and sword-and-sandals epics. Such justifications included a human historian imposing Nazism on an alien world, cultural contamination via a book about the Chicago mob, and the incorrigible act of handwaving that is the “Law of Parallel Planetary Development” which allows the Roman Empire to exist on a distant planet. Though, personally, my favourite in terms of conceptional boldness masking obvious cost-cutting is “Spectre of the Gun,” a Western played out on incomplete sets (often just a freestanding wall) which results in a distinct and surreal aesthetic….
Description: Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden have the resumes of Renaissance fen. They are/have been fanzine editors and publishers, conrunners, TAFF winners, Fan Hugo nominees, editors, bloggers, writers, nominees for professional Hugos, online mavens and understandably Worldcon Guests of Honor in 2016.
Part 1 (of 2) begins with their separate introductions to fandom, which began surprisingly early. They learned of fandom almost incidentally, from the comments in science fiction books, and books about science fiction. At 12, Patrick had received a gift subscription to Locus, and a few years later, in the mid70s, they were both fans.
From tales of early fannish activity to life-changing experiences at conventions, Patrick and Teresa tell stories about how they met, Tim Kyger’s recruiting them into local fan activities (including mimeography!), and “the very slow internet” of fanzines in the ‘70s. Their most intense convention running experience was Iguanacon, and here they talk about what Iggy was, how it came to be, and their involvement. We continue with anecdotes about how they started their careers, “Making Light”, Teresa’s lightning fast speed editing, and Viable Paradise, the writing workshop that they created and a crowning achievement.
The interview is great fun. There are Harlan stories, their “meet cute” story, and many, many fond memories of lives lived in fandom.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
September 24, 1934 — John Brunner. (Died 1995.)
By Paul Weimer: John Brunner, the man who saw our future. Or multiple futures. Yes, I know science fiction is really about the present much more than “predicting the future”, but take a look around at our year of 2024, with random violence, political instability, a kaleidoscope of fashions and trends, social divisions, global terrorism, extremism, billionaires running amok. And also, gay marriage, affirmative action, electric cars, the use of marijuana and more.
John Brunner
Aside from the fact that the random violence in the book is NOT gun-based, we seem to be living very much in the world of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. But that’s not all. In The Sheep Look Up, we get environmental degradation, a Republican President who says the answer to all our problems is “Deregulation”, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a degradation of quality of life across the board. Or The Jagged Orbit, where a cabal of Republicans are going to use computers to swing an election. Or The Shockwave Rider, showing a United Stated dominated by computer networks a la the internet, even as infrastructure crumbles.
Reading (or rereading Brunner) in 2024 can be a lot.
Beyond the gloom and doom of Brunner’s trilogy, though, there is much lighter fare if you want to try one of SF’s greatest visionaries. Out of his large oeuvre, my favorite is The Squares of the City.
Boyd Hakluyt is a traffic and systems engineer who is hired by a fictional South American country to resolve a traffic and transit problem. While there, he gets wrapped up in a plot between the government and the not so loyal opposition, in a literal chess match where Boyd finds himself a piece on the board. It’s a taut and fun political thriller that might be a bit light on the SF, but high on tension, drama, and if you like chess, you will love this book. And then there is The Infinitive of Go, which is the type of multiverse novel whose implications slowly creep on you.
Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings) is set to narrate Odysseus Rising, a new Audible Original sci-fi adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, written by novelist and popular science fiction and fantasy writer Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children Of Time).
The project has been in development since late 2024 and is now being lined up to launch February 25, 2027.
The synopsis reads: “After a decade of war, Ilium is reduced to a ruined world of ashes…The Ithaca, a ship besieged by oligarchs and parasites, resolutely awaits the return of their Captain. Carrying the weight of duty and the dead, Odysseus begins the long journey home, flying in the face of the Gods. But the Gods will not be defied. If Odysseus is doomed to never reach the safe harbour of his people, he must find a way to bring the Ithaca to him. And so, his real journey begins, not through space, but deep into time itself.”…
…Adrian Tchaikovsky commented: “Taking on a project like this was a real challenge, working with the spirit of the original and exploring the concepts of gods, monsters and the great journey through the science-fiction tradition. Following in Odysseus’s footsteps and taking his travels into the realms of space and time, was a real privilege and I’m over the moon to be working with Andy Serkis on the project.”…
Mars may have been a much wetter and more geologically active world than it is today, with water repeatedly coursing through its rocks in different forms, a new study suggests.
The discovery comes from a region along the edge of Mars’ Jezero Crater known as the Margin Unit. NASA’s Perseverance rover has been exploring the area since 2023, and its observations reveal evidence of at least three distinct episodes of water interacting with Martian rocks — including one involving hot groundwater circulating beneath the ancient surface, according to a statement from the space agency.
The Margin Unit region hugs the inner edge of the crater and was identified through observations from orbit. Scientists initially expected Perseverance to encounter sedimentary rocks deposited along the shoreline of the ancient lake that once filled Jezero….
…Instead, the rover found igneous rocks that originally formed from molten material deep underground or through volcanic activity. That unexpected geology preserved an intricate record of water activity.
“Before we arrived at the Margin Unit, the main hypothesis — derived from orbital observations — was that the carbonate seen from orbit formed from interaction with the lake that existed in Jezero Crater,” Candice Bedford, lead author of the study and a research scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said in the statement. “But now we know that this location became a sort of crossroads for aqueous systems. The Margin Unit findings are important because Jezero Crater sits inside one of the largest exposures of carbonate on Mars, so what we learn here reaches well beyond this crater.”…
…Using Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument, researchers analyzed more than 185 bedrock targets across the Margin Unit. They found evidence that water altered the rocks during multiple episodes.
During the first episode, carbon-dioxide-rich groundwater reacted with olivine, a mineral that formed as magma slowly cooled. The reaction produced carbonate minerals within fractures in the rock.
A later episode appears to have involved Jezero’s ancient lake. Some of the rocks contain silica, which can form when olivine reacts with water and is particularly abundant in rocks that were once below the lake’s waterline.
Then came a third, hotter episode. Mineral veins containing calcium sulfate and fluorite formed in the eastern Margin Unit, suggesting that hot water once circulated through the volcanic rocks…
(12) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 169 of the Octothorpe podcast, “The Helsinki Problem”, is here!
John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty discuss LAcon V some more, talk about first conventions, libraries, the philosophy of programme, and more. Then Alison talks about a piece of art. It’s a long one!
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Soon Lee, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and 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 Andrew (not Werdna).]
Legendary filksinger Kathy Mar died September 23 at the age of 75. She was one of the earliest inductees to the Filk Hall of Fame (1996), where her citation says:
…With a clear and strong soprano voice and a unique guitar technique, Kathy is a distinctive and polished performer. Moreover she is well known for generously sharing her time with any musician interested in learning how to improve. She has given many an impromptu lesson in vocal technique or guitar work or songwriting, and is extraordinarily approachable.
Kathy Mar, GoH at Loscon 50
She constantly promotes new and upcoming filkers, by giving encouragement, by requesting harmonies and accompaniments from performers, and by performing the songs of other filkers.
She is active and innovative in the promotion of filk, both in and out of the fan community. With Lindy Sears, she devised “The Dandelion Conspiracy,” an informal movement to give filk greater acceptance. …
Kathy Mar was an eight-time winner of filk fandom’s Pegasus Award. Three times for Best Filk Song: “Arafel’s Song” (Tree of Swords & Jewels) (with Mercedes Lackey) (1989); “Drink Up the River” (1994); “When Giants Walked” (1996). Three times for Best Writer/Composer (1989, 1993, 2004). Once for Best Classic Filk Song, “Flowers for Algernon” (2024). And once for Best Love Song, “Velveteen” (1991).
She was Special Music Guest at Denvention III, the 2008 Worldcon.
Kathy Mar started her professional music career as a streetsinger and folk artist in the clubs and coffeehouses of Denver and environs. That is where she discovered filk and filk discovered her. Her first recordings were on the Off-Centaur label where she did three solo albums and additional songs on many other projects. She followed that with two albums of more eclectic styles on Thor records…
One of her songs has been played on the Dr. Demento Show (“Calm Down”)…
Avengers: Armageddon may spell the end of the Avengers as we know them, but from the ashes rises a mighty new era for Marvel’s Merry Mutants in Maximum X-Men!
Launching this December, the all-new ongoing series by writer Christopher Yost and artist Tony S. Daniel—two X-Men superstars in their own right—brings together a powerhouse lineup including stalwart X-Men and iconic mutant heroes. With the Avengers disbanded, they’ll step up to become Earth’s new Mightiest Heroes! Today, fans can get a first look at the series, including the debut of explosive variant covers by Simone Di Meo and Ken Lashley, along with a sneak peek at the action-packed interior artwork.
MUTANTS BY BIRTH, HEROES BY CHOICE. After the cataclysmic events of Armageddon, who’s left to save the world from Avengers-level threats? In the absence of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Storm and Wolverine assemble a new team of Earth’s Mightiest Mutants to face the foes no single hero can handle. But they may quickly come to regret that decision when the Annihilation Wave arrives on Earth!
Explaining the team’s mission in an interview with Newsarama, Yost said “To protect a world that hates and fears them. The X-Men will always do the right thing, they’re fighting ignorance as much as supervillains. But in this moment in time for the team, humanity seems to be coming around a little bit. In a world without Avengers… who will save us?”
Following the jump, check out the new artwork and stay tuned for more news about the series in the months ahead.
The Horror Writers Association and StokerCon are pleased to welcome Chet Williamson as a guest of honor for StokerCon 2027!
Chet Williamson has written horror, SF, and suspense since 1981. Among his many novels are Second Chance, Ash Wednesday, Reign, and Psycho: Sanitarium, the authorized sequel to Robert Bloch’s classic. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies.
His work has won the International Horror Guild Award and the Splatterpunk Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award, the HWA’s Stoker, and the MWA’s Edgar.
He has also narrated nearly a hundred audiobooks by such authors as Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Keene, and many others. He has appeared in several films, and has had a number of original plays produced.
His archive was recently acquired by the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies Collection, and a new novel, Shift, will appear in 2027.
Our subscription drive at Clarkesworld Magazine is still going and is now 70 new subscribers short of its goal. We had hoped to reach that in time for our 20th anniversary issue in October so we could give everyone their raises as part of that celebration. It’s going to be close.
Social media screenshots and video seem to indicate that copies of the game Marvel’s Wolverine sent to countries in the Middle East included redacted and heavily altered references to Mystique’s same-sex relationship and marriage with crime boss Tyger Tiger, per a report in Kotaku.
In some of the screenshots currently circulating on social media, images of Mystique and Tyger in bridal gowns have been completely removed.
“Why did you censor Mystique’s lesbian relationship in Lebanon,” one person wrote on X in response to a tweet about the game from its developer, Insomniac Games. The post came with an accompanying image showing an empty picture frame that, in other territories, includes a picture of Mystique and her wife.
The new Marvel action title is being distributed by Sony Interactive Entertainment as an exclusive for the PlayStation 5. It is not clear how many, or which countries, specifically have been impacted. Them has reached out to Sony for comment and will update if we hear back.
Another X post highlighted by Kotaku allegedly shows a censored photograph as well as a censored love letter between the two.
A video posted on Reddit further compiled instances of the alleged censored Middle Eastern version of the game, which included a redacted reference Mystique makes to “my wife.”
“In my version of the game scenes mentioning mystique and tiger censor or cut out anything mentioning their relationship, thought it was a glitch at first but as I played through I realized it wasn’t,” the Reddit post reads.
Mystique and Tyger’s love story is a central aspect of the game and even led to some fans falsely believing that Mystique was retconned to be queer. However, as pointed out by gaming website The Gamer, Mystique’s sexuality has always been fluid and has included her being married to another woman at least once. Mystique had a long-running relationship with Destiny, real name Irene Adler, and the pair are married in the Earth-616 timeline. (They were written in some early comics as gal pals with sapphic undertones.)…
The use of artificial-intelligence tools to write scientific papers could be much more prevalent than was previously thought. That’s the upshot of a study that estimates that almost nine out of ten papers published in December 2025 in a major biomedical-article database showed signs of AI-assisted writing.
The study, which was posted on the arXiv preprint site on 12 August and has not yet been peer reviewed, puts the rate of usage of AI large language models (LLMs) at 77% for papers archived in the PubMed Central repository and published in the whole of 2025, and 52% for those published in 2024, suggesting LLM use is on the rise. (The study included only papers written in English.)
These figures are substantially higher than previous estimates of LLM use in the scientific literature. A 2025 paper authored by some of the same researchers that analysed abstracts of papers in PubMed, rather than the full text, puts the figure at at least 13.5% for 2024 . Meanwhile, a 2026 study that looked at papers across academic disciplines estimated that 57% of 2025 papers were probably AI-influenced….
Science fiction has never been short of spellbinding openers. William Gibson’s Neuromancer conjures an entire cyberpunk world with its image of a sky “the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” while Ursula K. Le Guin writes just four words — “There was a wall” — to introduce one of the most important ideas of The Dispossessed. Other authors, like Frank Herbert with Dune and Dan Simmons with Hyperion, take a more novelistic approach, dropping readers into the strange preparations for Paul Atreides’ journey to Arrakis or the pilgrims’ desperate voyage to the Time Tombs.
While all of these sci-fi openings do something different, they also share that same unputdownable quality only the best writers can muster. Still, after decades of reading science fiction, I’ve never found a starting sentence from a book more brutally poignant and true than Ray Bradbury’s opening line in Fahrenheit 451.
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
All he needed was six words. That’s all Bradbury required to introduce one of the most famous dystopian novels ever written. The sentence is almost comically straightforward, which makes its meaning all the more horrifying. Bradbury doesn’t begin by explaining why books are forbidden or by introducing the society that outlawed them. Instead, he puts us directly inside the head of the story’s protagonist, Guy Montag, a fireman whose very job is to burn said books. The pleasure isn’t metaphorical. Montag genuinely enjoys watching books of all kinds erupt into flames….
…Published in 1953, the aptly-named Fahrenheit 451 arrived at a particularly anxious moment in American culture. Bradbury was writing in the shadow of World War II, the rise of McCarthyism, and the proliferation of television, while his awareness of the infamous Nazi book-burnings helped shape his obsession with the destruction of literature. Yet the novel was not meant to imply that “the government might ban books.” Bradbury himself later described Fahrenheit 451 as a warning about television, declining education, and people’s willingness to surrender reading and independent thought for easier forms of entertainment. In a 2009 interview, he said his science fiction was meant to look at the present rather than predict the future.
Despite insisting he was merely reflecting on his own era, Bradbury somehow managed to foretell the exact future we’re living in today, pinpointing a modern-day crisis that’s as terrifying as it is detrimental to society. While he imagined a state that physically burned books, Bradbury was far more terrified by a culture that would simply lose interest in them. The distinction is that you don’t need a totalitarian regime with a lit match when an entire population voluntarily turns away from books and the ideas within their pages.
The numbers surrounding modern reading habits prove Bradbury’s point. According to data from the National Endowment for the Arts, just 48.5% of U.S. adults reported reading a book in 2022, down from 54.6% in 2012. Fiction reading fell even further, dropping from 45.2% to an all-time low of 37.6% over that same decade. Furthering the decline, an analysis of two decades of American Time Use Survey data found that the share of Americans reading for fun on an average day plummeted from 28% in 2004 to just 16% in 2023. Sure, we’re not being forced to surrender and burn our literature; we’re just quietly letting it wither away….
(6) MOOMINSHOP IN BERGEN.[Item by Steven French.] Spotted on Bryggen in beautiful Bergen, a must for any Moomin fans:
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Mike Glyer]
September 23, 1971 — Rebecca Roanhorse, 55.
Rebecca Roanhorse entered the field with a roar, winning both the Hugo and Nebula with her first published sff story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” (Apex Aug 2017), and taking home the 2018 Astounding Award for best new writer.
Rebecca Roanhorse
She’s best known for being what Science Fiction Encyclopedia’s John Clute describes as “an advocate of the concept of Indigenous Futurism”, exemplified by her novels Trail of Lightning and Black Sun (both Hugo and Nebula finalists; the latter an Ignyte winner), and Storm of Locusts, and her short story “A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy” (also an Ignyte-winner).
Her novels Black Sun, Fevered Star, and Mirrored Heavens are part of the Between Earth and Sky series, winner of the 2025 Best Series Hugo.
She has created three novels in the Star Wars universe, Resistance Reborn (2019), DarkVengeance (2020), and Star Wars: Reign of the Empire: Edge of Abyss (2026).
Roanhorse also has written for comics and TV. She contributed a story about Echo to Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 comics anthology (2020). She was a writer on the first season of the 2023 television miniseries A Murder at the End of theWorld and the 2024 Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Echo.
Science fiction suggests that life on other planets, if it exists, is likely far more advanced than life on Earth. A recent study suggests otherwise.
This new study, led by Chris Doughty, a professor of ecoinformatics at Northern Arizona University, proposes that the extent to which life on potentially habitable exoplanets in Earth’s stellar neighbors is advanced is likely related to plant energy, not just how much time has passed. That means that, although Earth is young compared to some of its stellar neighbors, which are older by several billion years, life on exoplanets with worse conditions for cumulative photosynthesis likely evolved more slowly over billions of years.
“Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, given the high likelihood of intelligent life in the galaxy, ‘Where are they?'” Doughty said. “This paper suggests that our exoplanet stellar neighborhood may be quiet because most Earth-like planets near us are likely to be evolutionarily behind us and still at the microbial stage. Which means we can sleep well, because if life on those exoplanets evolved just like on Earth, most of those planets will just be filled with microbes and not advanced aliens.”
Students in Cornell’s Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS) have released mission results for two unique light-sail experiments. These sails are slightly larger than a pizza box and harness momentum from photons to accelerate to high velocities. With ChipSats onboard—gram-scale spacecraft that fit in the palm of your hand—the sails can become free-flyers. They origami-fold into CubeSats for launch and completely separate when deployed, allowing them to be far smaller and lighter than traditional solar sails. The ChipSats provide all ground communications and steering capabilities for a fraction of the mass and cost….
Takashi Yamazaki can keep King Ghidorah out of the marketing for Godzilla Minus Zero, but he is going to have a much harder time convincing fans that Godzilla somehow launched himself into the sky. The latest trailer ends with the King of the Monsters plummeting back to Earth after an unseen force appears to carry him high above the ground. We may not see three heads or a pair of enormous golden wings, but at this point, we don’t need to.
King Ghidorah has not officially been announced for the Godzilla Minus One sequel, and the trailer avoids showing exactly what Godzilla is fighting. However, almost every clue points directly toward the extraterrestrial kaiju, and the latest trailer all but confirms it. Godzilla survived Operation Wada Tsumi, and the country has spent two years attempting to recover from his attack. Yet the trailer’s final moments introduce the possibility that Godzilla is no longer the most terrifying monster in this world….
… The trailer refuses to provide a clear look at the new threat, but it allows viewers to see what that creature can do. Godzilla crashes to the ground in a sequence that recalls one of the most brutal moments in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, when Ghidorah carries Godzilla into the upper atmosphere and drops him. That does not mean Minus Zero is connected to the MonsterVerse, nor does it suggest Yamazaki is recreating that battle exactly. It does, however, draw from an attack that modern audiences strongly associate with Ghidorah. A kaiju capable of lifting Godzilla into the air would almost certainly need to fly, and there is no winged opponent more important to Godzilla’s history than the three-headed king….
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
The award, promoting imaginative SFF fiction in and about Pakistan, is named in honor of Dr. Abdus Salam and recognizes emerging speculative fiction writers of Pakistani origin or residence,
WINNER
“All the Tears from the River Below” by Rida Altaf
FINALISTS
“Qitmir” by Eman Farhan
“Dreams of Dying and Waking Men” by Shahmeer Mahesar
