Pixel Scroll 4/17/26 Nobody Pixels Me, Everybody Scrolls Me, I’m Gonna Eat Sandworms

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(1) STURGEON SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS. The J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction will hold the 5th Annual Sturgeon Symposium from October 15-16, 2026 at the University of Kansas. In addition to presenting the annual Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story, which will include a reading from the winner, they will host a guest speaker (TBD), while also showcasing work in SF by artists and scholars from around the world.   

The even schedule and Call for Papers is here: “2026 Sturgeon Symposium CFP”. This year’s theme is: “Changing Words, Changing Worlds: SF as a Literature of Resistance.” Deadlines for submissions is June 1, 2026.

(2) ABOUT BOOKCON 2026. After a hiatus lasting a half-decade, BookCon returns to New York this year. Variety has the latest details: “BookCon 2026: Schedule, Reservations, Authors, Details From Organizer (variety.com)

ReedPop made book lovers’ dreams come true last year with the reveal that BookCon would be returning in 2026 after the beloved publishing convention was retired in 2020.

Since that June 2025 announcement, readers have been dissecting every new piece of information about the two-day show leading up to its opening day this Friday. Tickets sold out immediately when they went on sale last September and reservations for author signings and exclusive events were snapped up just as quickly when they opened last month.

Now, the eve of BookCon 2026 is upon us and the organizers are shelving and stacking to prepare for the influx of authors and readers about to descend upon the Javits Center in New York. It’s a bright new chapter for the publishing industry as a whole, which had largely accepted BookCon was gone forever after its six-year hiatus….

… One bump that’s appeared along the long road to BookCon’s return is a boycott against the convention that began earlier this year. The movement started when it came to the attention of authors and ticketholders that ReedPop’s parent company, RELX, is also the owner of subsidiary LexisNexis, which has a contract with ICE. Upon that information coming to light, some authors who had already signed up to participate decided to pull out of participation.

While ReedPop is pressing on with BookCon despite that response from some, Rogers says the convention organizer does not begrudge those who have made this choice….

… Among the many notable authors and guests who will be in attendance are Leigh Bardugo, Marie Lu, Holly Black, Veronica Roth, Casey McQuiston, Jasmine Guillory, Tracy Deon, Matt Dinniman, Emily St. John Mandel, R.F. Kuang, Scarlett St. Clair and Andy Weir. Events include everything from a panel featuring “Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid and the showrunner behind the popular TV series adaptation, Jacob Tierney, to an “after dark” fantasy ball event….

(3) WRITERS FOR GHOSTS. Michael Hoskins discusses a good many examples of authors whose works were posthumously completed by someone else in “What Is Dead May Never Die: Speculative Fiction Authors and Their Afterlives” at Section 244. Hoskins concludes by casting doubt on the practice.

…These are just a few of the many works in speculative fiction where an author’s demise has not prevented new works coming out under their names. The phenomenon exists outside of speculative fiction, of course; Tom Clancy, V. C. Andrews and Robert Ludlum’s names continue to appear on books they never wrote.

As the reviews I’ve cherry-picked demonstrate, the results of one author finishing another’s work seldom satisfies audiences. Indeed, many of these works have become forgotten since their publication. Bester fans are happy to have Psychoshop, but it’s in no danger of displacing the Demolished Man or the Stars My Destination in his bibliography.

As I say, it’s easy to see why fandom believes someone else should come along and finish a Song of Ice and Fire should Martin fail to do so himself. My earnest plea is: Maybe you should reconsider?

(4) MAY THE FOURTH BID WITH YOU. Heritage Auctions’ Third Annual Star Wars Day Auction on May 4 will present production artifacts, original artwork, rare photography, iconic props, dozens of signed items, and a wide assortment of toys, cards, posters, and other notable rarities.

Highlights include:

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(5) ANIMATION IN TIMES TO COME. It’s either depressing or educational: Animation World Network’s “AI-Native Animation: A New Business Paradigm”.

This draft posits that artificial intelligence is not just revolutionizing the animation industry — it is replacing the underlying structures and assumptions. The traditional model — built on large teams, long timelines, and capital-intensive pipelines — is being overtaken by a system-driven approach that prioritizes speed, iteration, and direct audience connection. This is not a marginal efficiency gain. It is a redefinition of how animation is created, scaled, and monetized. The practical implication is straightforward: studios that adopt this model will begin to operate more like technology companies, while those that do not will be constrained by an increasingly obsolete system….

… The AI-native studio is structurally different from a traditional studio. It is smaller, more flexible, and organized around systems rather than departments. Key contributors are hybrid creative-technologists who can operate across disciplines and guide AI-driven workflows. The primary asset is not the content itself, but the system that produces it. This shifts hiring, team structure, and performance evaluation toward adaptability, systems thinking, and cross-functional capability….

(6) THE SOLUTION. [Item by Andrew Porter.] The sheep are too busy looking for clues to bother to Look Up… “The Sheep Detectives” – First Look Featurette.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 17, 1964 — The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room”

The cast of characters—a cat and a mouse, this is the latter. The intended victim who may or may not know that he is to die, be it by butchery or ballet. His name is Major Ivan Kuchenko. He has, if events go according to certain plans, perhaps three or four more hours of living. But an ignorance shared by both himself and his executioner, is of the fact that both of them have taken the first step into the Twilight Zone. — Opening narration of this episode. 

On this evening sixty years ago, The Twilight Zone‘s “The Jeopardy Room” first aired on CBS.  The plot is Major Ivan Kuchenko  as played by Martin Landau, a KGB agent who is attempting to defect, is trapped inside a hotel room in an unnamed, politically neutral country with a bomb about to go off unless he can disarm it. I’m assuming that you’ve seen, but on the grounds that you might not have, I won’t say more. It’s a splendid bit of Cold War paranoia. 

Like most of theese stories, it was written by Serling. It was directed by Richard Donner who later on would be known for The Omen, Scrooged and Superman but this was very early on in his career and he had just three years earlier released X-15, an aviation film that presented a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket aircraft program. Neat indeed. 

It is one of only a handful of The Twilight Zone episodes that has no fantastical elements at all. It’s a classic Cold War story more befitting a Mission: Impossible set-up than this series. It even involves a message delivered by way of a tape recorder, but mind you that series is two years in the future so that has to be just a coincidence. Or The Twilight Zone being The Twilight Zone…

Like all of The Twilight Zone series, it’s streaming on Paramount+. 

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(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 17, 1959 — Sean Bean, 67.

Today’s Birthday is that of Sean Bean whose most well known role is either Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark in Game of Thrones or Boromir in Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings trilogy (though his scenes in The Two Towers are only available on the extended version.) I really liked him as Boromir in The Fellowship of The Ring which I’ve watched a number of times. 

If you count National Treasure as being genre adjacent, and I certainly do given its premise, he’s Ian Lowe there — a crime boss and treasure hunter who is a former friend of Benjamin Gate, the character Nicolas Cage plays. 

He’s James in The Dark, a horror film based off Welsh mythology with connections to the Welsh underworld Annwyn.  

He’s done a lot of horror films — Silent Hill is his next one in which he’s Christopher Da Silva, husband of Rose, and it’s a haunted mansion mystery as its sequel.  He played Ulric in Black Death. Guess when that is set?  

Genre wise, there’s Possessor where he’s a mind jumping assassin. Hey it’s also listed as being horror! Then there’s Jupiter Ascending where he’s Stinger Apindi, Over there we find The Martian where he’s Mitch Henderson, and in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief he’s Zeus.   

More interestingly he was Inspector John Marlottin The Frankenstein Chronicles, an ITV series about a London police officer who uncovers a corpse made up of body parts from eight missing children and sets about to determine who is responsible.

Lastly I’ll note that he was in the Snowpiercer series as Mr. Wilford. I’ve not seen it. So how is it?

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Sean Bean

(9) COMICS SECTION.

My Easter books cartoon for @theguardian.com

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social) 2026-04-04T16:32:22.821Z

(10) INSTANT RARITY. WIRED says it’s time has come: “The Star Trek Communicator Is Now a High-End Wristwatch”. But you aren’t likely to own one.

Clearly channeling none other than Captain Kirk, the high-end Swiss brand has turned Star Trek’s iconic Communicator into a full-on luxury wristwatch—and we’re very much here for it. Fans of the ’60s sci-fi series will be delighted to recognize the characteristic cover and perforated grille, which, oh yes, flips up to reveal the watch workings underneath. However, despite the light-hearted design cues, those workings very much lean into serious horology….

… The stellar irony here is that in the Star Trek universe, the United Federation of Planets is a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society where money is obsolete and its enlightened citizens work instead for self-improvement and the betterment of humanity. Hautlence didn’t get this memo, as each Retrovision ’64 will retail for an out-of-this-world $165,000. Only three ardent Trekkies will be able to get one, though, as that’s all that will be made….

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(11) FLYING BRICKS. “Lego’s Big New ‘Star Wars’ Set Comes Just in Time for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ to Replace It” snarks Gizmodo.

This morning Lego lifted the lid on its latest addition to the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series line: a 1,809-piece replica of the stripped-back N-1 Starfighter piloted by Din Djarin in The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian season three….

…It’s a fantastic model and definitely has us dying for Lego to do it over as a classic, yellow-hued Naboo fighter at some point, but it’s hard to deny it’s a little unfortunately timed, considering that we know that just a few short weeks after this set hits shelves, The Mandalorian and Grogu will officially replace it as Din’s primary ride just to give him a new Razor Crest (which, ironically, now has a quite Naboo-esque yellow set of accent markings!). At least the Lego model could never be replaced in our hearts….

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(12) TRAILER PARK. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu Final Trailer. In theaters May 22.

[Thanks to Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Olav Rokne, 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 Andrew (not Werdna).]

The Theory of Related-ivity: Segment XV

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The Theory of Related-ivity:

A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category

By Heather Rose Jones

(This is a serialized article exploring the history of the Best Related Work Hugo category in its various names and versions. If you’ve come in at the middle, start here [Segment I]. Note: Click on figures for larger images.)

Contents

Part 3: Historic Trends
3.4 Other Tags
3.4.1 Introduction
3.4.2 People
3.4.3 Properties
3.4.4 Other Topics
3.4.5 Publishers
3.4.6 Series

Part 3: Historic Trends

3.4 Other Tags

3.4.1 Introduction

Several types of data were tracked that only occur sporadically. Therefore, this section provides more anecdotal observations than solid trends. Only in the case of People (both as authors and as Topics) is there an analysis by era. Due to the nature of this data, comparisons of the three eras have not always been done.

3.4.2 People

Named People appear in the data set in two contexts: as authors (or editors or other contributors) and as subjects. Overall 581 individuals appear in one or the other function, 536 as authors and 118 as subjects, with 74 of them appearing in both functions.

Repeat authors are common with 123 (23%) authors appearing more than once.[1] Four People appear as authors 10 or more times. Arnie and Cathy Fenner appear together 17 times as editors of the Spectrum Art volumes. Farah Mendlesohn appears 12 times as author or editor of works of Criticism, Essays, Biography, and History. John Clute appears 10 times as author primarily of Reference works, but also of Criticism, Essays, and Reviews. Other authors appearing 4 or more times are:

  • Algis Budrys (Criticism, Fiction, Reviews)
  • Andrew M. Butler (Criticism, Essays, History)
  • Brandon Sanderson (Craft, all related to the Writing Excuses Podcast)
  • Dan Wells (Craft, all related to the Writing Excuses Podcast)
  • Dave Langford (Essays, Criticism, Reviews, Fiction, Reference)
  • Edward James (Essays, Criticism, History, Biography)
  • Gary K. Wolfe (Reviews, Criticism, Essays)
  • Harlan Ellison (Essays, Criticism, Graphic, Art)
  • Howard Taylor (Craft, all related to the Writing Excuses Podcast)
  • Isaac Asimov (Autobiography, Letters, Fiction)
  • James E. Gunn (Biography, Autobiography, Reference, Essays)
  • Jeff VanderMeer (Craft, History, Art, Fiction)
  • John Scalzi (Essays, Criticism, Craft)
  • Jordan Sanderson (Craft, all related to the Writing Excuses Podcast)
  • Mary Robinette Kowal (Craft related to the Writing Excuses Podcast, plus Science)
  • Mike Ashley (History)
  • Mike Resnick (Craft, Convention Publications)
  • Neil Gaiman (Graphic, Essays, Criticism, Fiction)
  • Paul Kincaid (Criticism, History, Biography)
  • Robert Silverberg (Essays, Autobiography, Interviews)
  • Ursula K. LeGuin (Essays, Craft, Criticism, Reviews)

Repeat named-individual subjects are also common, with 33 individuals (28% of Person-subjects) appearing more than once in this function. The most common People appearing as subjects (those appearing 4 or more times) are: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Octavia Butler.

When the functions as author and subject are combined, additions to the repeat-appearance list (with 4 or more appearances in either function) besides those mentioned previously are:

  • Bob Eggleton
  • Brian Aldiss
  • David A. Cherry
  • Diane Dillon
  • Iain M. Banks
  • Jack Williamson
  • Joanna Russ
  • John Picacio
  • Leo Dillon
  • Michael Whelan
  • Philip K. Dick
  • Samuel R. Delany
  • Shaun Tan
  • Stephen King
  • Terry Pratchett
  • Ursula Vernon
  • Vincent DiFate

For gender comparisons, a different baseline is used than in previous discussions, due to the difficulty in teasing out calculations involving multi-author works. Here a simple count of distinct persons named in any function in the overall data set is used:

  • Male 413 (71%)
  • Female 156 (27%)
  • Non-Binary 8 (1%)

This is a different way of looking at the data than that seen in the General Trends section under Gender, which calculated the proportions in terms of works.[2]

Although there is an even gender balance among the most common authors (10+ appearances), authors appearing 4-9 times are heavily skewed towards male authors (90%), with authors appearing at lower frequencies running consistently around 70% male, in line with the overall percentages.

Table 20: Repeating Authors by Gender

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A similar analysis for the gender of Topics shows a slightly reversed pattern with the proportion of male Topics increasing from a level roughly similar to overall representation, to higher levels of male subjects with decreasing frequency of appearance.[3]

Table 21: Repeating Topics by Gender

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For Topics, it’s easier to also do a comparison across different eras, although it isn’t broken down by repeat appearances due to the small numbers. Male Topics predominate heavily in the first two eras and remain at 2 out of 3 in the most recent era, though this is less male-skewed than the overall named-person dataset.

Table 22: Proportion of Gendered Topics by Era

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Conclusions

Both as authors and as subjects, the distribution of People follows a typical “long tail” distribution. The types of Categories associated with repeating authors is quite varied, but unsurprisingly corresponds largely to the “most popular” and “more popular” groups. Gender distribution behaves differently for the two functions, with repeat authors skewing male (except at the very highest numbers, thanks to 2 very prolific individuals), while the percentage of male subjects is more balanced for repeat subjects, then skews more heavily male at lower frequency of appearance. In other words, male authors are more likely to get multiple nominations, while non-male individuals are slightly more likely to be the subjects of multiple nominated works, entirely due to the increase in non-male Topics during the Related Work era. This matches other measures of gender balance which shows a shift from male dominance in earlier years to a fairly recent approach to parity.

Works were tagged for Property when the Topic of a work is a single specific media Property.[4] There were 59 works (10% of the dataset as a whole) tagged for 33 distinct Properties, of which 9 Properties appeared more than once.[5] The Properties appearing more than once are:

  • Doctor Who (6)
  • Star Trek (6)
  • Discworld (5)
  • Star Wars (5)
  • Lord of the Rings (4)
  • Game of Thrones (3)
  • Dune (2)
  • Harry Potter (2)
  • The Hobbit (2)

Six of these originated as print fiction, although the nominated works may concern derivative video material (tv and movie versions), while the remaining 3 originated as video formats.[6] There’s a greater variety of original formats for the full data set, including comics and games, and print-origin works make up slightly less than half of the full set.

The works take a variety of approaches to their Topics. The most common Category was Criticism (15) followed by Reference (11), Art (10), and History (9). Category types with 5 or fewer examples were Essays, Craft, Graphic, Journalism, Reviews, Science, and Role-Playing Game.

For 2 of the repeating Properties, some works were part of an identifiable Series, while the other repeating Properties involved all independent works. Doctor Who had 3 works from the “Chicks Dig” Series and 2 works from Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale. Discworld had 3 works from the Science of Discworld Series.

Male-only authorship was 58%, non-male only authorship was 34%, while mixed authorship was 5%, showing a slight skewing of authorship towards non-male compared to the dataset as a whole, but this is entirely due to the gender make-up during the Related Work era, where male-only authorship was 35%. In the other two eras, proportions matched the dataset as a whole.

Property-tagged works made up the following percentages in each era:

  • Non-Fiction 5% of Finalists
  • Related Book 3% of Finalists, 12% of Long List
  • Related Work 10% of Finalists, 10% of Long List

In other words, while works about specific Properties appear to be nominated in relatively steady proportions (within the limits of the data set), they have increased in popularity to make Finalist more often in the most recent era. It’s possible that this is related in some way to the expanded format scope, as nearly half of the works in that era (46%) are non-Book formats. If so, the effect would be related to a shift in interest from Books to other formats, as the overall proportion on the Long List is similar to the previous era. It’s also possible that the increased interest is due to some other correlating factor such as author gender.

Only one Property-tagged work has won Best Related: Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It.[7]

Conclusions

Overall, works related to specific media Properties make up a small but meaningful percentage of nominees, but have only been recognized as Finalists in proportion to their numbers in recent years. The works discuss their subjects through a variety of lenses and using a variety of Media formats. Author gender followed the overall proportions in the earlier two eras but skewed away from all-male authorship in the Related Work era at the same time that interest shifted from Books to other formats.

3.4.4 Other Topics

In addition to tagging works for the Person or Property that is the subject, a reasonable attempt has been made to identify other types of Topic. This may be in addition to a Person/Property tag, in rare cases. Rather than attempting to define a relatively closed set of Topics, the tags have been chosen expansively and only afterwards normalized to combine what are clearly close variants of the same theme.

After excluding works that are tagged only for Person or Property, or which are identified as concerning multiple Persons, or are a multi-genre collection of the work of a single author, the following interesting themes emerge from the remaining 272 works.

A large number (61) focus on specific textual genres, especially the broad genres of science fiction and fantasy, but also including micro-genres such as steampunk, pulp fiction, and the Omegaverse.

Topics related to the process of writing and publishing are also well represented (34), mostly as a general Topic, but including specifics such as magazines, the business of writing, and tropes.

In similar numbers we find Topics related to representation (31), either on the page or from the creator side. Especially prominent are works relating to feminism and the representation of women, racial representation, and disability.

Next we have Topics related to the culture of fandom and conventions (25). Topics on various artistic media (18) include studies or techniques related to specific formats such as movies, graphic art, and anime. Various Topics relate to space (18), including both astronomy and speculative works on space travel and space stations. 15 works focus on the literature of specific countries, regions, or languages. Hard sciences and technology works (14) include factual Science and speculative extrapolations such as robots and futurism.

Topic groups consisting of 5-10 works include myth and legend, gaming, life sciences, industry awards, material culture/artifacts, and several Topics falling generally under philosophy.

There are no overall conclusions to this chapter, given the broad scope of the Topics and the small data numbers.

3.4.5 Publishers

Identifying the Publisher of each work isn’t entirely straight-forward, therefore this discussion is an approximation. Publisher data is taken either from the official Hugo website data or from Wikipedia, Goodreads, or Internet Archive data. But disentangling different editions, different Publisher imprints, and determining whether to lump imprints together under a Publisher—to say nothing about tracking mergers and acquisitions—goes beyond the scope of this project. In some cases, it’s possible that listings have been lumped together as variants on a Publisher name that, in fact, represent different Publishers or different imprints with similar names. There’s also the question of what to identify as the “Publisher” of personal Blogs, Social Media accounts, and YouTube channels.

Given the preceding, the data identifies 294 different Publishers. Only absolute numbers are analyzed, not changes over time. Five Publishers appear 10 or more times:

  • Underwood Books (26)—Primarily Art Books, especially the Spectrum Series
  • Paper Tiger Books (15)—Art Books
  • Tor Books (12)—A variety of content
  • NESFA Press (11)—A variety of content, primarily Essay collections
  • McFarland & Company (10)—A variety of content, primarily Biography

For Publishers appearing fewer than 10 times, we see a typical “long tail” distribution, indicating that Publisher distribution is relatively random.

Table 23: Repeating Publishers

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University Presses

One might expect that university presses would be well represented for the more academic works, however they are only a minor fraction. There are 19 different Publishers with the word “university” in the name, representing 48 works. The university presses aren’t limited to the most scholarly Content. In addition to Biography, Craft, Criticism, Essays, History, and Reference works, they also publish Reviews and Interviews. The most common content types not published by university presses are: Art, Autobiography, and Fiction.

Author gender for university press publications is less skewed towards male authors than the dataset as a whole, with 56% all-male authorship, 33% all non-male authorship, and 10% mixed.

No other subsets of Publisher have been analyzed further.

3.4.6 Series

Nominators are fond of following thematic Series of works. In the data set, 93 works (15% of the dataset) are identified as belonging to a Series of publications, representing 37 different Series. (Of which 14 are represented by only a single nominee.) Series with 3 or more nominations are as follows:[8]

  • The Spectrum annual Art showcases (17 works)
  • The Modern Masters of Science Fiction Series from the University of Illinois Press (6 Biographies)
  • The Chicks Dig… Series from Mad Norwegian Press (5 volumes of Essays covering female fandoms of specific Properties)[9]
  • The Writing Excuses Podcast (5 years)
  • The #BlackSPecFic Report (4 years)
  • The Anatomy of Wonder (3 separate editions)
  • The Cambridge Companions to Literature Series from the University of Cambridge Press (3 nominees, but two are the same work with an extended eligibility)
  • Chinese Science Fiction, An Oral History (3 volumes in various combinations)
  • Jim Hines’s Invisible Essay collection Series on marginalized representation (3 years)
  • The Science of Discworld (3 volumes)
  • Writers of the Future (3 volumes, although one was explicitly ruled ineligible as Fiction and it’s likely the other two would have been as well, if evaluated)

The following Series have two works in the data set:

  • Reader’s Guide (genre survey)
  • Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale (insider analysis of the show)
  • Dream Makers (Biography collections)
  • Faces of… (Photography of figures in the field)
  • I, Asimov (Autobiography)
  • Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies (both works are histories of pulp magazines)
  • Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century (Biography)
  • Sandman (Graphic novel)
  • Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (annual books in print report)
  • Speculative Fiction: The Year’s Best Online Reviews, Essays, and Commentary
  • The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2 different editions)
  • Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Video Essays)

As seen above, works appearing as part of a Series represent a wide variety of content Categories and (in the Related Work era) Media formats. As such, further analysis would be unlikely to provide meaningful results.

(Segment XVI will cover Part 4 Conclusions, Section 4.1 Thoughts on Categories and Eligibility and Section 4.2 Summary.)

[1]. That is, this represents 23% of the distinct authors, not 23% of the works. Similarly for People-subjects below.

[2]. The more complicated calculation for comparing the different eras hasn’t been performed, but based on the gender fractions per work comparison, we would expect to see a similar gradient with male dominance decreasing over time.

[3]. There are some flaws to using the full set of named people as the reference point, as it assumes that out of a random pool of participants a person is equally likely to be an author or subject of a work. This is clearly not the case, but it would be much harder to identify gender balance in the potential pool of subjects.

3.4.3 Properties

[4]. This does not include works where the work is the Property. For example, a critical study of Batman comics would count as Batman being the Property, while the nomination of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns itself does not count.

[5] As with multi-author collections, the Properties mentioned in multi-Topic collections are not individually tagged.

[6] All of these Properties have some video presence, although it isn’t clear that Discworld nominees benefitted from the associated video works.

[7]. The repeated appearance of works in the Chicks Dig… Series inspires one hypothesis for the gender skewing in the Related Work era. Possibly as part of overall gendered trends, non-male authors are more interested in producing fannish Analysis of specific Properties.

[8] Ongoing projects, such as Podcasts or certain types of Websites have not been included as a Series.

[9]. I have included one work in this Series titled Queers Dig… as there doesn’t seem to be a good, simple umbrella label for the whole series.

Pixel Scroll 4/16/26 Once Is Happenstance, Twice Is Coincidence, Three Times Is Pixel Scrolls

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(1) 2026 GUGGENHEIM FELLOWS. Namwali Serpell, author of the 2020 Clark Award-winning The Old Drift, and Marlon James, whose Black Leopard, Red Wolf won a 2020 Locus Award, are among the 233 Guggenheim Fellows announced today.

Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. 

The fellows span 55 different disciplines.

(2) A SFF MURDER. Pratchett’s here – “6 Mystery Novels with Unorthodox Settings and Setups” at CrimeReads.

Terry Pratchett, Snuff

The Discworld series, starting in 1983, quickly evolved from its parody nature to a dense universe and a perfect setting for whatever ideas Pratchett wished to explore. Commanders Vimes is a character that evolved with it, a grizzled police veteran with an adamantine sense of justice. In Snuff he finds himself on vacation in a small country town so, of course, there is a murder.

Terry Pratchett’s skill for blending relatable characters, affectionate pastiche and cuttingly incisive satire are all on fine display here. It explores small-town politics, racial prejudice and corruption all through the fine tunes comic style that Pratchett made his own.

(3) MEDICINE AFTER THE WORLD ENDS. Jason P. Burnham speculates about “Post-Apocalyptic Antibiotics” at SFWA’s Planetside.

Whoopsie-doodle! Your protagonist has just been written into a world where the infrastructure for antibiotic production no longer exists. Perhaps you’re writing in the near future, and climate change has progressed to the point of the complete collapse of global commerce. Perhaps the aliens from the first Independence Day movie have blown up all the major centers of production around the world. Or maybe the antibiotic production infrastructure has yet to be invented because you’re writing in the past or a pre-technological fantasy world. Wherever you’re creating, no one is making antibiotics. Protagonists living a “life after antibiotics” (or before, as may be the case) is becoming an increasingly relevant theme/scenario for modern speculative fiction. What’s a protagonist (and author looking to write such a setting with believable medical accuracy) to do?

Before we dive into what your main character’s options are for making/acquiring antibiotics, first we must consider the spectrum of conditions for which you might need antibiotics. Some common bacterial infections are those of the urinary tract, lungs (pneumonia), ears, skin and soft tissue, bones, and meninges (meningitis). Add to that diarrheal illness and sexually transmitted infections. If there are no antibiotics, what can your protagonist do for the afflicted? …

… Bald’s Eyesalve is just one example—perhaps your protagonist has access to other forgotten or dismissed remedies. An ancient text, only recently discovered. An Indigenous remedy known only through oral tradition, in danger of being phased out of history by colonial violence. Lost scrolls from antiquity stumbled upon in a cave, desert, or island that are previously unread, but provide crucial insights into antibiotic properties and preparations from commonly available plants, fungi, insects, or other plot/world-convenient source. It is entirely plausible!…

(4) THE CUTTING ROOM. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog dissects the 1991 Best Dramatic Hugo results in “A Fantasy Of Suburbia (Hugo Cinema 1991)”.

…More than 800 people voted in the category, as there were strong feelings expressed about the top two contenders. Paul Verhoven’s Total Recall had been the standard-bearer for fans of hard-edged classic science fiction, while Tim Burton’s gothic fable Edward Scissorhands was beloved by the more whimsical factions of fandom. The winner was decided by just six votes — a margin of less than 0.7 per cent. The shortlist was rounded out by the top-grossing movie of the year, Ghost, a well-liked sequel to the Hugo-winning Back To The Future, and The Witches, the last theatrically-released movie from iconic puppeteer Jim Henson….

(5) INTERVIEW SUBJECT. Mental Floss reveals “The Tragic Real-Life Inspiration Behind ‘Interview with the Vampire’”.

…In 1972, Rice lost her five-year-old daughter Michele to leukemia. The child’s death led to the creation of Interview with the Vampire, which became Rice’s first published novel when it came out in 1976. 

“Some time after, in grief, and madness, a dreadful fiction was born to me out of the tragedy—a book that was most certainly allegorical though I never noticed—Interview with the Vampire in which the child vampire Claudia, created by two males clearly married to each other, realizes that though she is immortal like her parents, she will never grow up,” Rice wrote in a 2019 Facebook post….

(6) UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH. James Davis Nicoll spotlights “Five Vintage SF Works About Traveling to the Moon” at Reactor.

People the world over welcomed the distraction offered by astronaut Jeremy Hanson as the Canadian and some others made their way to and around the Moon in the spacecraft Artemis II.

Now, the idea of a journey to the Moon is nothing new. The Moon has been in the sky for a very long time. I have no doubt it will still be there when humans are a fading memory1. It’s only natural that storytellers have long pondered journeys there. Before the nineteenth century, these journeys were only fantasies. Of late we have begun to imagine Moon travel via technology. You might enjoy these early works….

One of them features comics hero The Spirit —

The Spirit on the Moon by Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Wallace Wood (1952)

The Interplanetary Flight Commission is determined to put men on the Moon. The problem is that any man with the requisite skills has far better options than a quite-possibly-one-way trip to an airless, deadly world. Any free man, that is. Hardened convicts can be enticed into volunteering, in return for freedom should they return.

Someone will have to accompany the crooks, to keep them on-mission and ensure the success of the venture. That man is, as the title suggests, masked crimefighter Denny Colt, AKA the Spirit. But is even a two-fisted man of action up to the challenges of keeping panicky convicts alive on an alien world?

Sending masked crimefighters to the Moon? What next? Dick Tracy?

Efforts to test crewed spaceflight with animals infuriated animal welfare agencies. Nobody seems all that bothered about sending convicts. This is just one reason why this atypical Spirit arc is incredibly depressing…the art, the Spirit’s internal monologue, and the unpleasant fatalities all play a role.

(7) BUCKET LIST ADDITIONS. “By the Power of Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe Popcorn Bucket Is a Castle and the Sword of Power Is a Drink Container” – Fantasy Land News tells all about them.

The Masters of the Universe Cinemark popcorn bucket, collectible tumblers, Sword of Power drink container, and plush lineup have been officially revealed ahead of the film’s June 5, 2026, theatrical release, with the full lineup unveiled at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas. Cinemark’s Masters of the Universe collectibles feature a Castle Grayskull popcorn bucket with a built-in drink holder tower, a full-face Skeletor sculpted tumbler with red glowing eyes, a He-Man figure cup, a Sword of Power drink container that unscrews in three sections and uses the hilt as a straw, chibi-style Skeletor and Beast Man plush toys, and a Skeletor Bust Popcorn Bucket….

…What makes this one genuinely special is the dual functionality. Popcorn fills the main Castle Grayskull body, while one of the side towers functions as a dedicated drink compartment — making this a complete all-in-one concession piece that holds both your popcorn and your drink simultaneously….

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… The Skeletor face tumbler. The skull face, red glowing eyes, and purple hood are all rendered in three-dimensional detail, wrapping the front of the cup in a character portrait that reads as a genuine collectible figure rather than a branded cup. Comes with a black lid and straw. Skeletor is played by Jared Leto in the 2026 film, and the sculpt captures the classic animated Skeletor design rather than a film-specific likeness. Expected to be priced around $17.99

The He-Man figure cup features a fully articulated He-Man figure sculpted onto the dome lid of a blue translucent cup, with He-Man’s likeness also embossed through the cup body itself — the hero raising the Power Sword against an embossed rocky landscape visible through the translucent blue walls. The figure on top stands free of the lid and is detailed enough to function as a standalone display piece. The blue translucent design is a clean and distinctive execution that stands apart from the darker tones of the Skeletor and Castle Grayskull pieces.

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(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 16, 2007 — Ray Bradbury Awarded Pulitzer Board Special Citation

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Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger (on the left) presents Michael Congdon (accepting for Ray Bradbury) with the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.

Eighteen years ago, a special citation went to Ray Bradbury from the Pulitzer Board for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.

But the Pulitzer Board doesn’t give out such an Award without picking a specific work and this is the full language of their announcement:

Bradbury came of age as a writer before the postwar ascendancy of the paperback book as a publishing medium. Instead, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, short stories published in pulp magazines like Astounding Science-Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories stood at the forefront of the field. As such, many of his novels are actually “fixups”—a term coined by SF legend A.E. van Vogt to describe novels assembled from previously published short stories that were buttressed with new interlinking maCulled from Bradbury’s late 1940s output, The Martian Chronicles is a sweeping account of the colonization of Mars amid nuclear war on Earth. Its literary structure (patterned after Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio) earned plaudits from such notable critics like Christopher Isherwood, who read the book after a fortuitous encounter with the younger writer (and fellow Angeleno) at a bookstore. In his review, Isherwood deemed Bradbury “a very great and unusual talent,” a tastemaking assessment that charted the course of the rest of his career.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) EO-POOH. “Pooh in pencil: sketches for original Winnie-the-Pooh book shared for first time” – see them in the Guardian.

Previously unseen drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that show the honey-loving bear before he was introduced to generations of readers in the 1926 book have come to light.

Two preliminary pencil sketches by E H Shepard have been shared for the first time by his family to mark the centenary of one of the most loved books in children’s literature.

Having been abandoned at the very earliest stage of the book’s creation, the drawings offer a rare glimpse into Shepard’s working process and imagination as he brought AA Milne’s character to life. They depict passages that are familiar to readers but were not accompanied by illustrations in the original published book.

A pencil drawing, captioned: “Climbing very cautiously up the stream”, shows Pooh and his adventure-loving friends Christopher Robin, Piglet and Owl. It was intended for Chapter VIII, in which Christopher Robin leads an “expotition” to the north pole….

(11) ‘UNC’ GAMES. [Item by Steven French.] If you ever wondered what an ‘unc’ game is, Keza MacDonald explains all in the latest “Pushing Buttons” newsletter: “Long live the ‘unc game’” in the Guardian.

While researching women’s experiences in multiplayer video games recently, I came across this thread on the subreddit about Bungie’s latest live shooter, Marathon. “I’ve played a lot of shooters, and as a feminine-presenting player tbh it’s often a struggle,” it reads. “I’ve heard all the ‘get back to the kitchen’ jokes … ​But Marathon has been completely different, guys. I haven’t had a single issue, people have been incredibly kind and helpful… ​The community feels genuinely welcoming to everyone.”

The top-voted reply? “Benefit of being an unc game.”

What the heck is an unc game? It didn’t take me long to discover that “unc” (short for uncle) is the latest semi-disparaging gen Z name for anyone over about 30. Further back, it originated as AAVE slang. “Uncslop” refers to the implicitly terrible games beloved by this older generation of players; basically anything made in the 1990s or 2000s, from Knights of the Old Republic to World of Warcraft. An unc game, then, is a game predominantly played by millennials (and older) – and Marathon is one of them. A week or so later, I read Emanuel Maiberg’s article for 404 Media, which dug into the game’s unc credentials.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this cultural milestone: the point at which video games have been around long enough for old games (and older gamers) to become fundamentally embarrassing. I’m totally here for it – long live the unc game. May uncs enjoy slower-paced shooters and 12- to 15-hour cinematic narrative games for ever, while simultaneously decrying the frenetic pace and aesthetic overwhelm of young-people games. This is the eternal generational cycle, and it should be embraced and enjoyed.’…

(12) NEW D&D PLAY SHOW. “Dungeons and Dragons Launches Official Actual-Play Show” – Variety has details.

Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast is putting their trademarked D back in DM-ing with the launch of a new “Dungeons & Dragons” actual-play TV series.

Launching with its first two episodes available on YouTube on April 22 at 6:30 p.m. PT, the new show, titled “Dungeon Masters,” stars Jasmine Bhullar (“DesiQuest,” “Dimension 20”) as the Dungeon Master along with players Mayanna Berrin (“Dispatch,” “StoryQuest”), Christian Navarro (“13 Reasons Why,” “Forgotten Realms: Tears of Selune”), Neil Newbon (“Baldur’s Gate III”) and Devora Wilde (“Baldur’s Gate III”).

For the uninitiated, an actual play show features people who are really playing “Dungeons & Dragons,” or another table-top roleplaying game. The format has become widely popularized in recent years through the web series “Critical Role” and Dropout’s “Dimension 20,” both of which focus on D&D-style game mechanics, but without using the official D&D products or licensing. (Instead of Dungeon Masters, you have game masters.)…

(13) UNKNOWABLE TV. ComicBook.com can’t forget “7 Unsolved TV Show Mysteries That Still Haunt Us Years Later”.

… A show must hook viewers from its first episode; otherwise, they risk being suddenly cancelled. That means creators who plan for multiple seasons risk leaving the story unfinished if the audience numbers are not to the liking of the executives in control of content planning.

When a series builds its entire identity around a puzzle, the contract with the audience is particularly binding. Occasionally, creators soften the blow after the fact, such as when Mike Flanagan shared his planned resolution for The Midnight Club following Netflix’s decision not to renew it. More often, the creators move on, the IP stays locked in corporate vaults, and the audience is left with a half-told story and no explanation in sight.

Here’s one of their unanswered questions:

2) Who Was Ciaran and What Was His Plan in 1899?

1899, created by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the duo behind Dark, premiered on Netflix in November 2022. The series follows a group of European emigrants aboard the steamship Kerberos who discover a ghost ship and descend into a reality-fracturing nightmare. The first season’s climactic twist reveals that the entire historical setting is a simulation, that the passengers are sleeping in pods aboard a spaceship in the year 2099, and that the simulation was originally built by protagonist Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham) to preserve her dying son. The season ends with Maura waking in space to find a message from her brother Ciaran, who has been manipulating the simulation from the outside and whose larger purpose was never explained. 

Friese and Odar had designed 1899 as a three-season story, with Season 1 functioning as Act One of a complete arc. Sadly, Netflix cancelled the series in January 2023 without explanation beyond the platform’s standard data-driven criteria. Ciaran’s identity, his relationship to Maura’s original world, and the nature of the simulation’s origins remain completely unresolved, turning what should have been a first chapter into a permanent cliffhanger.

(14) FIRST MOVIE ROBOT. “A Rare 1897 Film Discovered in an Old Trunk in Michigan Features the First On-Screen Appearance of a Robot” – Smithsonian Magazine chronicles the discovery.

In a battered trunk full of his great-grandfather’s nitrate film rolls, a Michigan man discovered a relic of filmmaking history: a copy of “Gugusse and the Automaton,” a long-lost 45-second film by French auteur Georges Méliès, a pioneer of early cinema.

The slapstick short film, created around 1897, was famous for containing the very first on-screen appearance of a robot—preceding the term itself by more than two decades. But no watchable copies of the film were known to survive.

Last fall, however, retired teacher Bill McFarland of Grand Rapids brought his great-grandfather’s collection to the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Past America’s video about The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) covers casting decisions and a “Banned Secret Ending and Hidden Truth They Tried to Hide”.

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

2026 Tähtifantasia Award Shortlist

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The Helsinki Science Fiction Society has chosen the nominees for the 2026 Tähtifantasia Award, given for the best fantasy book published in Finnish during the previous year.

The award jury is composed of critics Jukka Halme and Aleksi Kuutio, Osmo Määttä of Risingshadow.net and Niina Tolonen, a book blogger. Aleksi is the chair and is also on the Board of The Finnish Critics’ Association.

  • Leonora Carrington: Kuulotorvi [The Hearing Trumpet], (Translated into Finnish by Kristiina Drews, Kosmos)
  • Emmi Itäranta: Lumenlaulaja (Teos)
  • Yan Lianke: Kun aurinko kuoli (Rìxī, Translated into Finnish by Riina Vuokko, WSOY)
  • J. S. Meresmaa: Noidanlanka (Myllylahti)
  • Olga Ravn: Vahalapsi (Voksbarnet, Translated into Finnish by Sanna Manninen, Kosmos)

Jon Klassen Wins 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

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Canadian-born illustrator and artist Jon Klassen is the winner of the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Given annually, it is the largest in the world of its kind. The prestigious award comes with a cash prize of SEK 5 million (roughly $530,000 U.S. at present exchange rates).

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Jon Klassen

Jon Klassen was born in 1981 in Winnipeg, Canada, and now lives in Los Angeles, USA. He began his career working in animated film before he started illustrating children’s books. His breakout book, I Want My Hat Back, was published in 2011. It’s a layered, ingeniously told tale of ownership and morality, right and wrong, that makes the reader work in more ways than one.  

Jon Klassen’s body of work forms a subtle, astute, and humorous investigation into existential questions, where feelings of anticipation, suspense, and shock play a central role. His books open new perspectives on life’s challenges of uncertainty and hopefulness.

The award will be presented by H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden on May 25, 2026, at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.  

Bottom of Form

Klassen studied illustration and worked first as a designer and illustrator on films such as of Coraline (2009) and Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) as well as in video production. Cats’ Night Out (2010) was his debut as a picture book illustrator. Klassen’s Hat Trilogy (I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and We Found a Hat) have sold millions of copies around the world and have been translated into 22 languages. In addition to his own books, Klassen has illustrated eight books by other authors, and his illustrations have also appeared in various anthologies. His work has received the German Prize for Youth Literature (2013), the Caldecott Medal (2013), the Kate Greenaway Medal (2014), and the United Kingdom Literary Association’s Book Award (2014). Klassen currently lives in Los Angeles with his family.

The award was created in 2002 by the Swedish government to highlight the importance of reading. Past ALMA award winners include Marion Brunet (2025), Indigenous Literacy Foundation (2024), Laurie Halse Anderson (2023), and Jaqueline Woodson (2018).

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 4/15/26 I Scrolled The Pixels And The Pixels Won

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(1) SFWA INFINITY AWARD. SFWA Honors Roger Zelazny with Infinity Award – complete details in the File 770 post.

(2) COMPTON CROOK AWARD. Hayley Gelfuso is the winner of the 2026 Compton Crook Award.

(3) PROMETHEUS BEST NOVEL CONTENDERS. The 2026 Prometheus Award Finalists for Best Novel have been announced. See the five titles at the link.

(4) DITMAR FINALISTS. The 2026 Ditmar Awards ballot is out. Eligible to vote for the Australian award are members (including supporting members) of the Continuum, Conflux or Swancon conferences from 2022-2026. 

(5) GREG KETTER IS NOW A T-SHIRT. Cotton Expressions is ready to sell you a Greg Ketter-inspired t-shirt — “I’m Still Angry”. You can choose one with either Ketter’s original sentiment, or a Bowdlerized version.

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(6) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES. Space Cowboy Books has dropped Simultaneous Times Episode 98 with work by Eric Fomley and Marie Vibbert. It’s nearing the end of its run — “Only two more to go on the monthly schedule,” says Jean-Paul Garnier.

Stories featured in this episode:

  • “Wired Hearts” by Eric Fomley, with music by Phog Masheeen, read by Jenna Hanchey
  • “The Drive” by Marie Vibbert, with music by TSG, read by Jean-Paul Garnier

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

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(7) ANTHROPIC LITIGATION NEWS. SFWA’s “Anthropic FAQ” includes these updates.

  • The Hearing for final approval of the settlement has been moved from April 23 to May 14, 2026. The deadline to submit claims has passed.
  • Attorneys representing authors and publishers in the $1.5 billion Bartz v. Anthropic copyright settlement lowered their bid for attorney fees in the case by more than one hundred and fifty million dollars, from the original 25% of the Settlement Fund ($375,000,000) to 12.5% of the Fund ($187,500.000). The requested amount no longer contains payments to legal firms not associated with the firms acting as Class Counsel.
  • As of March 19, there have been 99,450 claims representing 54% of the titles on the Works List with 350 opt-outs (less than 0.4%), and only 41 objections. At that percentage, claims would pay almost twice as much to authors and publishers as the original figure of $3,000 per work.
  • The following is shared with the permission of the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) as part of pre- and post-claims guidance for educational authors provided in a 3/19 TAA webinar presented by Brenda Ulrich, a Partner at Archstone Law. For additional guidance on filing claims and navigating the post-claims process, visit https://www.taaonline.net/anthropic-settlement.
    • Under the accepted principle of “contra proferentem” ambiguous contract language should be interpreted in favor of the party that did not write the contract.
    • Under copyright law, “the right to publish” is not the same as “the right to reproduce.” Anthropic used the material it infringed to reproduce material for its LLM, but it did not publish it. If the publishing contract’s “grant of rights” clause only grants the publisher the right to publish the book, but not to “reproduce” it, there may be an argument that the author never granted this right to the publisher, and thus the author is the only party entitled to recover from the settlement.

(8) THE TWO-MINUTE HATE. And Jason Sanford vents again at Genre Grapevine: “On the Anthropic ‘Blood-Money’ Settlement”.

…Despite the settlement being praised as a major win for authors, I still hate it.

As I wrote last year, the settlement doesn’t cover all copyright works, instead only applying to authors who officially registered their books with the U.S. Copyright Office. Almost every other country in the world doesn’t require this registration, so the settlement left out all those authors. Also not included were short story and short-form nonfiction authors, even if their works were officially registered with the copyright office.

In addition, the $1.5 billion settlement is not even a speed bump for Antropic. As Pete Furlong with the Center for Humane Technology has noted, “the same week the settlement was first proposed, Anthropic raised $13 billion at a $183 billion valuation. In effect, Anthropic’s penalty for stealing the creative output and economic livelihood of thousands of authors amounted to less than 1 percent of the company’s total value.”…

(9) WELCOME HOME. Call it the Artemis II “unboxing” video – see it at Facebook.

(10) SURPRISE. And here’s a variation on a humorous meme inspired by the Artemis II mission.

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(11) GODZILLA MINUS ZERO TRAILER. Godzilla attacks New York in this 48-second teaser. Godzilla Minus Zero will make landfall in Japan on November 3, with a North American theatrical release on November 6.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

April 15, 1933 — Elizabeth Montgomery. (Died 1995.)

The beauty of these Birthdays is that I can decide that one series that a performer did is enough to be worthy of a write-up. So it is with Elizabeth Montgomery and her ever-so-twinkly role as the good witch Samantha Stephens on the Bewitched series.

I loved that series and still do. Bewitched is one of those series that the Suck Fairy keeps smiling every time she comes near it. Obviously she too has very fond memories of it. 

Sol Saks in interviews said that the Forties film I Married a Witch based on Thorne Smith’s partially-written novel The Passionate Witch, and John Van Druten’s Broadway play Bell, Book and Candle, adapted into a 1958 film of the same name, were his inspirations for the pilot episode. These films were properties of Columbia Pictures, which also owned Screen Gems, the company that would produce Bewitched. 

Bell, Book and Candle is the prime story source as that has the good witch Gillian Holroyd, played by Kim Novak, casting a love spell on Shep Henderson as played James Stewart to have a fling with him but she genuinely falls for him.

Bewitched debuted sixty-two years ago this Autumn. It would run on ABC eight seasons, for two hundred and fifty episodes. 

Let’s discuss the other cast of Bewitched. Dick York was Darrin Stephens, her husband and I thought that he was a perfect comic foil for her. Dick Sargent would replace the ailing York for the final three seasons.  It’s been too long since I’ve seen the series but I think I remember his chemistry with her being a little less smooth.

So the next major cast member was Agnes Moorehead as Endora, Samantha’s mother. She worked fine in her role which was that she disapproved of her daughter’s decision to marry a mortal. She often times casts spells on Darrin for her own amusement, but mostly to try to drive Darrin away from Samantha. (It didn’t work. At all.) Despite that, she is the most frequent houseguest and one of the most loyal members of Samantha’s family who dotes on her grandchildren, Tabitha and Adam. 

Then there’s his boss, Larry Tate, who was played by David White, and he was well cast in that role, and many crucial scenes took place at the Madison Avenue advertising agency McMann and Tate where Darrin worked.

So that brings us to Elizabeth Montgomery. She began her performing career in the Fifties with a role on her father’s Robert Montgomery Presents television series. She’d also be a member of his summer theater company. 

She turned out to be very popular and was kept busy performing consistently from there on. She’d have two genre roles prior to Bewitched, the first being as Lillie Clarke on One Step Beyond in “The Death Waltz” and, because everyone seemingly has to be in at least an episode of it, on The Twilight Zone as Woman in “Two”. The only other actor here is Charles Bronson as, oh guess, Man. It’s a piece of pure SF by Montgomery Pittman who also wrote the scripts for “The Grave” and “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank”. 

So now we come to her in Bewitched, and the role that she was perfect for.  It’s hard to write her up here without noting sexism of the time as her beauty was definitely the attraction for many of the viewers as opposed to her talent according to some of the news articles at the time. Or so said the critics. 

But talented she was, displaying a deft comedic touch that I’ve seen in few female performers since her as she never overplayed her role, something that would’ve been oh so easy to do. She was Samantha Stephens, the very long-lived witch who defied witchery tradition and married a mortal. 

Do note that it openly depicted them sleeping together and sexually attracted to each other. No separate beds here.

The first episode, “I Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha” was filmed a short while after she gave birth to her first child. 

She was intelligent, not reserved and depicted as more than a match for anyone who might get in her way. Unusual for a female character of that time. 

I have over the years rewatched many of the episodes, and they do hold up rather well provided you like Sixties comedy. I think this along with such shows as My Favorite Martian and The Munsters are some of the finest comic genre work done.

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(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) BROOKLYN COMIC CON ANNOUNCED. Publishers Weekly has the story: “Brooklyn to Get Its Own Comic Convention This Fall”.

The Brooklyn Organization Dedicated to the Endurance of the Graphic Arts (BODEGA), a new nonprofit dedicated to supporting and sustaining comic and graphic arts in Brooklyn and the greater New York area, will host the inaugural Brooklyn Expo of Comics (BEC), a two-day comics festival in Williamsburg, November 14–15.

BEC will feature a varied slate of panel discussions with leading creators and industry voices alongside a convention where over 100 artists will showcase and sell their work. Its goal, per a release, is to spotlight comics talent from New York and around the world while also generating appreciation for independent comics and zines.

BODEGA is led by a team of comics publishers, creators, and industry leaders. Bryce Gold, previously head of content at Comixology and head of comics at Kickstarter, will serve as executive director of the new organization.

Comics writer James Tynion IV will chair the board of directors, on which Gold and illustrator Courtney Menard also sit. Illustrator and educator Christina Lee will be communications manager, comics literary agent Paloma Hernando will serve as outreach manager, and Smoke Signal publisher Gabe Fowler joins as panel coordinator for the convention….

… The event’s bodega-themed branding extends to a number of its initiatives. BEC also plans to debut the BODEGA Comic Arts Trophy (CAT), honoring standout publications presented at the convention with a mid-convention award ceremony, and launch the Brooklyn Annual of Graphically Elevated Literature (BAGEL), a new magazine showcasing comics storytelling and talent from New York-based cartoonists, with future editions premiering annually at BEC.

BODEGA and BEC are supported by an initial donation from Tynion, who is also CEO and founder of multimedia production house Tiny Onion. Tynion lives and works in Brooklyn, so this festival is personal for him, he said….

(15) WRITING FOR A MEN’S MAGAZINE. Lex Berman’s 2021 article “Ted White Goes Rogue” at Yunchtime may have been missed here – and even if it wasn’t this still will be news to someone!

In a recent interview, Ted White talked about his early career as a jazz writer, when he was hanging around in the clubs of Greenwich Village, and how he first got published in Rogue Magazine. His comments sparked my curiosity about that magazine, which was a magnet for talented and eccentric writers and editors. How did a semi-sleazy magazine for men become a cross-roads for so many talented writers and editors? And why were so many of them writers of science fiction?…

…From the start, [publisher William] Hamling and editor Frank Robinson, looked for hungry young writers and sought to give the magazine a literary tone, punching up at their cash-rich competitor, Playboy. Hamling also brought Harlan Ellison onto his staff as associate editor, a position which Ellison used to tout himself and the magazine all over the country. Ellison was promoting his new job at the magazine like nobody’s business, to such an extent that another acti-fan, Bob Tucker, complained that he spent an entire evening listening to Ellison chew his ear off about Rogue in July 1959….

(16) ATTENTION TOM BAKER FANS. “Doctor Who’s Tom Baker, 92, steps back inside the TARDIS in new pics” at Radio Times.

Doctor Who legend Tom Baker has delighted fans by stepping back into the TARDIS for some incredible new photos.

Baker, now 92, famously played the Fourth Doctor, remaining many fans’ favourite incarnation of the Time Lord after his run from 1974 to 1981.

Now, new photos of the actor show him in a very familiar situation – peeping out of the doors of the TARDIS.

(17) SPINDIZZY. “The World’s Largest Wind Turbine Will Smash Previous Records” – Scientific American gives details.

…The world’s largest wind turbine—currently being tested off the coast of China—has blades that are more than twice as long as a Boeing 777’s wingspan. It can generate 26 megawatts (MW) of energy, more than double the global average for individual turbines. But its record is about to be smashed to smithereens: another offshore wind turbine that is twice as powerful has been announced by Ming Yang Smart Energy, a company based in southern China.

With a capacity of 50 MW, this supersized structure is designed to float on the ocean’s surface and can withstand typhoons, according to the company, which plans to start making the turbine later this year and to deploy it next year….

(18) WEIRD AI MOVIE TRAILER. If you’d never watch anything made with AI, then definitely don’t watch this fake movie trailer for π Hard, by AI OR DIE featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson and other science and tech celebrities.

(19) SF² CONCATENATION SUMMER EDITION IS HERE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The summer edition (northern hemisphere academic year) edition of SF² Concatenation is now out with news, reviews and articles.

v36(3) 2026.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2026

  • Newscast for the Summer 2026. This includes within it many key sections. See also the master newscast link index that connects to all its SF/F genre and science news sub-sections. In the mix are its Film News;  Television News;  Publishing News;  General Science News  and Forthcoming SF Books from major British Isles SF imprints for the season subsections, among much else.
     
  • Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die – Jonathan Cowie
    Film that is a dark humorous, gritty SFnal adventure in which a wild-eyed man from the future warns that there’s some shιt that’s about to come down. It’s gonna try to give you everything you ever wanted. But in the end, it’ll all be a lie!…  Are any of you listening ?
     
  • Is the speed of light an absolute limit?? – Steven French
    This is one for our physicist regulars but is genre-adjacent.
     
  • Does life on Mars doom humanity?? – Jonathan Cowie
    We do not see alien civilisations, so a ‘Fermi filter’ may prevent their rise. If we find life on Mars then the rise of life is not the difficult evolutionary step. If the Fermi filter is not in our past, then it must be something in our future that prevents us going to the stars. Recent discoveries on Mars may therefore be worrying!
     
  • Gaia 2026
    Annual oddities and whimsy
     
  • Ten Years Ago Exactly. One from the archives.
    German Science Fiction since 1945 – Dirk van den Boom
    Germany has an extensive history of science fiction. Dirk van den Boom provides a summary review of some of Germany’s landmark SF since the end of World War II.
     
  • Twenty Years Ago Exactly. One from the archives.
    Where are the Robots? – Tony Chester
    ‘The future’s here said the pioneer’ but where are the robots? It’s 2006 after all.

v36(3) 2026.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v36(3) 2026.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

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

SFWA Honors Roger Zelazny with Infinity Award

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is pleased to announce that the SFWA Infinity Award will be presented this year to Roger Zelazny at the 61st Annual SFWA Nebula Awards® ceremony on June 6, 2026 in Chicago, IL.

Now in its fourth year, the SFWA Infinity Award serves to highlight the achievements of creators who did not live long enough to be considered for the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award but who left a distinct and tremendous legacy in science fiction and fantasy. Although they are no longer with us to celebrate this honor, these writers helped to lay the foundation for today’s science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. Their memory abides not only in the works they published, but also in the worlds they inspired fellow and future writers to dream up in their wake.

SFWA President Kate Ristau reflects fondly on the power of Zelazny’s worlds:

“One of my first deep dives into science fiction was The Chronicles of Amber. Zelazny drew me right into the story with his world-building and world-breaking. Characters could manipulate their reality, walking between worlds, and they didn’t always make the decisions you wanted. There were heartbreaking moments and series-wide challenges that were epic and unforgettable; they lingered with you. Zelazny’s impact lingers on with us, shaping how we think about multiverses and how we create characters that are complicated, nuanced, and sometimes deeply flawed. I am honored to present him with this year’s Infinity Award.”

Challenges of the Multiverse. Roger Zelazny entered our genre’s publishing record in 1962, the same year as Samuel R. Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin, and the era of his ascension as a writer was marked by heated debates about the nature of science fiction and fantasy. Some called the work that he and his peers published “New Wave”, a term bound up in contemporaneous social criticism about the uptick in experimental and more “worldly” art, film, literature, and music.

This catch-all term was used in a positive light by some, to suggest a transformation in the genre: a coming-of-age for SFF as a thoroughly “literary” form, featuring more comfortable and slipstream uses of science-fictional and fantastical tropes to tell more nuanced human stories. It was also used in a negative light by some critics, to cast aspersions on SFF writers who played too poetically with language, “wrote back” against ancient myths and story structures, and wrestled with recent insights from psychology and sociology in their prose.

As for the writers themselves, including Zelazny?

Most were less interested in the labels used by critics to describe their work, and more in how to keep growing their craft – often in publishing contexts we can also learn a great deal from today.

Zelazny developed as a writer in an era when magazines were common incubators for novel-length masters of the craft. Widely read by paying customers, the major magazines of Zelazny’s day had different opportunities to curate budding and distinct voices like his.

That’s why, after publishing in magazines like Amazing and Fantastic, Zelazny was able to win a Hugo for Best Novel with what was first a serial production, delighting readers over two issues of F&SF in 1965. Zelazny’s This Immortal (first printed as “…And Call Me Conrad”) would tie for that Hugo with another patchwork publication by another SFWA Infinity Award recipient: Frank Herbert’s famed fix-up novel, Dune.

Zelazny’s Lord of Light (1967), nominated for a 1968 Nebula and winning the Hugo, would then entrench his distinct voice and approach to mythic world-building as a key component of mid-century SFF canon. That year, he would also support SFWA’s internal curation of canon, by editing our third-ever Nebula Award Stories anthology and providing thoughtful remarks on each tale.

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Writers new to Zelazny’s work might be pleasantly surprised to pick up a volume today; most of his stories boast lush language and a fantastical interweaving of science-fictional conceits with allegorical and/or psychologically rich characters.

George R.R. Martin describes Zelazny as follows:

“He was a poet, first, last, always. His words sang. He was a storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen.”

Perhaps just as importantly, Zelazny operated in a community of dreamers, experimenters, and literary incubators. He was loved by many of his peers, and flourished within a network of fellow creators. To read Zelazny’s work today, and to reflect on the context in which it was written, is to remember how much the writers of SFF today share with generations of innovators come before.

[Based on a press release.]

2026 Ditmar Awards Ballot

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Sample of Ditmar trophy from 2019.

The Ditmar Awards subcommittee announced the finalists today on Facebook.

Voting for the Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Award for 2026 is open until one minute before midnight Melbourne time on Sunday May 17 (i.e. 11:59 p.m., GMT+10). Eligible voters are members (including supporting members) of the Continuum, Conflux or Swancon conferences from 2022-2026. 

DITMAR BALLOT 2026

Best New Talent

  • KA Burgess
  • Fionn MacPherson
  • Scott Steensma
  • Greg Foyster
  • Meg Wright / Red Wallflower
  • Emmi Khor
  • Adam Richard
  • Roanne Lau
  • Jeff Clulow

Short Story

  • ‘A Shortcut via the New Tunnel, M-ate’, CH Pearce, (Never Say Die, CSFG)
  • ‘Bitter Skin’, Kaaron Warren (Night and Day, Saga)
  • ‘Phantom Loop’, S L Johnson [with Gio Clairval] (Tales from the Crosstimbers, Crosstimbers Publications LLC)
  • ‘Scorpion Girl’, Janeen Webb (Scorpion Girl, PS Publishing)
  • ‘The Girlfriend Experience’, CZ Tacks (Lightspeed Magazine)
  • ‘Through These Moments, Darkly’, Samantha Murray, (Clarkesworld)

Novella/Novelette

  • ‘The Hidden God’, Tim Napper (Asimov’s March/April)
  • ‘Cinder House’, Freya Marske
  • ‘The Cold House’, AG Slatter
  • ‘A Second Coming’, Janeen Webb
  • ‘Drowning in the Dark’, Matt Tighe

Novel

  • The Crimson Road, AG Slatter (Titan Books)
  • Veil, Jeff Clulow, (Third Eye Press)
  • Honeyeater, Kathleen Jennings (Pan Macmillan)
  • Upon a Starlit Tide, Kell Woods (Harper Collins)
  • When Dark Waters Burn, Zena Shapter (Midnight Sun Publishing)

Collected Work

  • Drowning in the Dark and Other Stories, Matt Tighe (IFWG)
  • This Dark Architect and Other Grim Tales, Pamela Jeffs (Four Ink Press)
  • Songs of Shadow, Words of Woe, Matthew R Davis (JournalStone)
  • The Leper’s Garden and Other Contagions, Jeff Clulow (Third Eye Press)
  • Scorpion Girl and Other Stories, Janeen Webb (PS Publishing)

Professional Artwork

  • Honeyeater internal art, Kathleen Jennings
  • Never Say Die cover, Maddison Lee
  • The Ship’s Big Steaming Log: the Book of Bladderwrack, Adam Browne
  • Rebels & Rainbows cover, C.H. Pearce

Fan Art

  • Gideon the Ninth fan art, Annalise Jensen
  • Brave New Wardrobe, Conflux 19 art show, Kaaron Warren
  • Instagram art, Elise Miller

Far Writer

  • Leigh Edmonds, Ornithopter
  • Jan MacNally reviews, Ethel the Aardvark fanzine (MSFC)
  • Ian Mond reviews, Substack
  • Rob Masters, writings on aus.social
  • Claire Fitzpatrick, ‘Frankenstein in Pop-Culture’ (Aurealis)

Fan Publication

  • Aurealis Awards: Behind the Curtain podcast, Alexandra Pierce
  • Going Prose podcast, A.D. Ellicott and C.Z. Tacks
  • Recent Reads book reviews blog, Leanbh Pearson
  • The Narratives Library, Karena Wynn-Moylan
  • Terry Talks Movies, Youtube, Terry Frost

The William Atheling Jr Award

  • Eugen Bacon, ‘Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other’, Strange Horizons
  • Ian Mond for review in Locus
  • Story Thinking and the Real-world Applications of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writing by Helen Marshall, Kim Wilkins & Lisa Bennett
  • ‘The Horror of Australian Literary Censorship’, Louise Zedda Sampson, in Midnight Echo #20
  • ‘When ‘EAT THE RICH’ Is Not Enough: Horror Meets Late-Stage Capitalism’, Kirstyn McDermott, Ruadán Books
  • ‘Almost a Witch’, Freyja Stokes, Speculative Insight
  • Stephen Herczeg, ‘The Lost World: its influence on modern science fiction’, Steel True Blade Straight 2025/26, Belanger Books
  • Stephen Herczeg, ‘August Derleth and the rise of the Cthulhu Mythos’, The Pontine Dossier Millenium Edition 2025, Belanger Books
  • Russell Blackford, ‘Mass Appeal: Stephen Dedman’s Genre Alchemy’, Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature, issue 57
  • Russell Blackford, ‘Remembering Damien Broderick: A starlit mind in the cosmos of ideas’, SF Commentary 120

2026 Prometheus Award Finalists for Best Novel

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The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the five finalists for the Best Novel category of the Prometheus Awards.

  • Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); 
  • War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); 
  • No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); 
  • A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press);
  • Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy)

The Best Novel winner will receive an engraved plaque with a one-ounce gold coin. An online Prometheus awards ceremony is planned for August at a time and event to be announced.

Here are capsule descriptions of the Best Novel finalists, explaining how each fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Awards:

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Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press): The Young Adult science fiction novel centers on a boy who saves and adopts an intelligent alien pet on an ocean-dominated colony planet with dangers both alien and human. In the spirit of Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky and Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx novels, the story centers on Skut and Podge, two resourceful middle-school boys from refugee families. As they make friends in their new home, the boys confront class bullies and repressive teachers, cope with mob behavior and navigate the ocean’s tricky shores. In the process, they interact and communicate more with their orphaned young “dragon,” an electrosensitive six-limbed alien creature who may be more intelligent and formidable than it appears. Aimed primarily at ages 8 to 18 and avoiding explicit ideology, the novel gradually expands to include parents, administrators and other adults enmeshed in the colony town’s increasingly corrupt politics, which threatens livelihoods through onerous regulations, taxes and property confiscations. Ultimately, a violent invasion from human raiders threatens the colonists’ broader rights. With a strong career background in fishing and oceanography, Freer focuses more on the plausible ecology and boy-centered adventures than the politics of this plausible frontier planet, while allowing his live-and-let-live, peace and freedom themes to emerge naturally.

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War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press): Finding ways to come to mutual agreements through diplomacy and trading rather than coercion is a central theme in Book 7 of Gallagher’s frequent-Prometheus-finalist Fall of the Censor series. Following the liberation of dozens of worlds from the Censorate oppression, newly appointed ambassador Wynny Landry strives to prevent the rebellion from falling apart. Her task: convincing their governments to cooperate and forge trade deals for excess missiles despite differing cultures, interests and pressures. The novel centers on problems arising on Fiera, which formed a world government following the Censorite attack and atomic-bombing of 16 cities. So many state-commanded resources were put into defense and so much manpower lost to conscription that Fiera’s economy is failing. Meanwhile local politics keeps warships nearby, preventing them from supporting the alliance’s interplanetary defense. The story reminds us that even good and democratic societies can falter when politics, taxation, conscription and pork-barrel politics undermine their freedom, strength and adaptability. Among the libertarian themes: war as the health of the state, how governments can slide into despotism, the evils of slavery, the dysfunction of pork-barrel politics, and how censorship only makes people lust for forbidden fruit.

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No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press): The three-volume novel blends science fiction, fantasy, suspense, mystery, romance, adventure, political intrigue and a plausible “alien” biology in a universe where sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. In an interstellar future with settled human planets of widely differing societies, a freedom-favoring federation sends an ambassador to certify the final stages of induction of a previously lost colony. The first-contact story eventually focuses on a hidden world where the population has been genetically shaped to make everyone hermaphroditic. Both epic and intimate, with chapters alternating in perspective between the young human ambassador and an archmage, the novel becomes a love story about found family amidst a wider conspiracy threatening the federation’s commitment to equal liberty. Ultimately, in a multi-layered work launching her Chronicles of Elly series, Hoyt gradually weaves in a variety of libertarian themes while offering a radically different take on gender and sexuality than Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness.  Among them: the virtues and benefits of cooperation, individualism, private property, tolerance, equal justice and individual choice, providing a stark contrast with the  evils of aggression, tyranny, slavery and discrimination against sexual minorities.

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A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press): The science fiction saga, which launches the author’s Tales From the Long Night series, illuminates the ethics and efficacy of free trade and self-defense as a proper foundation for civilization. The novel is set on a colony planet where humans in towns and homesteading communities are struggling to recover centuries after a catastrophic attack and volcanic cataclysm that set back and severely limits their use of advanced technology. At the story’s heart is Shai, a young homesteader facing harsh frontier conditions, corrupt Townie politics, dangerous native species, and sinister forces amidst still-functional A.I.-powered orbiting war machines. Pierce celebrates the self-reliance and resilience of self-regulating frontier communities that survive and evolve based on the hard-won realities of voluntarism, mutual respect and cooperation. But this is also a cautionary tale about the deceptive idealism of a command-and-control ideology and the perennial tendency towards abuse of power, reflected in the Townies’ push for higher taxation, fiat money and indoctrinating state takeover of education. Narrating from her wry but hopeful perspective, Shai becomes a leader in her community’s struggles to defend their freedom, preserve their heritage and restore their world.

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Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (Caezick SF & Fantasy): Inspired by Vaclav Havel’s classic essay “Power of the Powerless,” this alternate history is set decades ago in a communist America where small moments of defiance or quiet resistance to governmental repression have unexpectedly big consequences. Set in the western United States dominated by a Soviet-Union-fostered socialist tyranny, the novel begins with one shopkeeper’s impulsive and fed-up act of taking down from his grocery storefront window a required propaganda poster expressing solidarity with the state revolution. In a dystopian society demanding utter submission and insistent on propping up its legitimacy, that simple act has a ripple effect on the shopkeeper, his wife and two children, and the wider world. Focusing on small acts of decency and honesty, the realistic yet inspiring story reveals how communism smothers the human spirit, denies reality, censors news, imposes lies and undercuts everyday life even when it doesn’t rise to the level of genocide or outright totalitarianism but strives to embody Czechoslovakia’s 1968 vision of “socialism with a human face.” Mirroring the psychological and political distress of many today for speaking the truth, Powerless is timely in reflecting the challenges in societies that claim to uphold freedom but suppress facts to enforce conformity.

Fourteen 2025 novels were nominated by LFS members for this year’s award. Other Best Novel nominees, listed in alphabetical order by author: Red Heart, by Max Harms; Forged for Destiny and Forged for Prophecy, by Andrew Knighton; All the Humans Are Sleeping, by John C.A. Manley; For Emma, by Ewan Morrison; Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom, by Laura Montgomery; Where the Axe is Buried, by Ray Nayler; The Underachiever, by David A. Price; and Caballeros del Camino, by R.H. Snow.

An online Prometheus awards ceremony, open to the public, is tentatively planned for mid-August. Science fiction fan and author Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, will be this year’s keynote speaker and celebrity guest presenter. The date of the ceremony will be announced in mid July once the winners are known for both annual categories, including the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established and first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently given in sf.

The LFS says these are the kinds of work recognized by the Prometheus Award –

“The Prometheus Awards recognize outstanding works of speculative or fantastical fiction (including science fiction and fantasy) that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor voluntarism and cooperation over institutionalized coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.

“Above all, the Prometheus Awards strive to recognize speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression, as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility and civilization itself.”

All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works for all categories of the Prometheus Awards, while publishers and authors are welcome to submit potentially eligible works for consideration using the guidelines linked from the LFS website’s main page.

A  judging committee, drawn from the membership and chaired by LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, selects the Prometheus Award finalists for Best Novel from members’ nominations. Following the selection of finalists, all LFS upper-level members (Full members, Sponsors and Benefactors) have the right to vote on the Best Novel finalist slate to choose the annual winner.

For a full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories, visit their site. For reviews and commentary on these finalists and other works of interest to the LFS, visit the Prometheus blog.

Hayley Gelfuso Wins 2026 Compton Crook Award

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The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) announced today that The Book of Lost Hours (Atria Books) by Hayley Gelfuso won the 2026 Compton Crook Award for best debut SF/Fantasy/horror novel.

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Since 1983, BSFS has given the Compton Crook Award for the best first novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. Judging for the award has two parts. First, members of BSFS picked six finalists by reading and rating debut novels published between Nov 1, 2024 and October 31, 2025. Then, in the finalist round, club members rated the finalists to pick a winner.  The other finalists were:

  • All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
  • The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
  • Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov
  • A Song of Legends Lost by M. H. Ayinde
  • Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington

The award includes a framed award document and, for the novel’s author, a check for $1,000 and an invitation to be the Compton Crook Guest of Honor at Balticon (the BSFS annual convention) for two years. Balticon is held in Baltimore over Memorial Day weekend, May 22-25th in 2026.

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Hayley Gelfuso

Hayley Gelfuso is the 44th winner of the award. Past winners of the award have included Donald Kingsbury, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Flynn, Wen Spencer, Maria Snyder, Naomi Novik, Paolo Bacigalupi, Myke Cole, Charles Gannon, Fran Wilde, Ada Palmer, R.F. Kuang, Arkady Martine, P. Djèlí Clark, Alex Jennings, and Kemi Ashing-Giwa. Last year’s winner was The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills.

Hayley Gelfuso is an author and poet who works in the environmental nonprofit sector. She has a master’s degree in biology from Miami University. The TV show Good Morning America chose The Book of Lost Hours as its September 2025 Book Club book. 

The Compton Crook Award was named in memory of Towson State College Professor of Natural Sciences Compton Crook, who wrote under the name Stephen Tall and died in 1981. Professor Crook was active for many years in the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and was a staunch champion of new works in the fields eligible for the award. For more details visit here.

BSFS is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, charitable, literary and educational organization, dedicated to the promotion of, and an appreciation for, science fiction in all of its many forms. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society was launched on January 5, 1963 and has been holding Balticon since 1967.

[Based on a press release.]