The Visual Effects Society presented the 2026 VES Awards at a ceremony on February 25.
James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash led the field, winning seven awards including the marquee Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, as well as for Emerging Technology and Outstanding Model, Environment, Character, Effects Simulations and CG Cinematography.
Deadline’s report says:
It’s a sucker bet to pick against an Avatar movie at the VES Awards. The first film in the multibillion-dollar franchise won six prizes at the 2010 ceremony, and The Way of Water topped that with nine in 2023. That means the Na’vi now have 22 VES statuettes.
The only other film to win multiple awards Wednesday was Netflix and Sony Animation’s streaming phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters, which won three for Outstanding Animation, Character (Rumi) and Effect Simulations in an Animated Feature.
Among the TV nominees, Disney+’s Star Wars series Andor and Apple TV/BBC Studios’ Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age were the only multiple winners with two each.
(1) JOHN SHIRLEY HOLDS BACK NOTHING IN MEMOIR.[Item by John A. Arkansawyer.] “John Shirley’s guide to wrecking your career in science fiction” at Boing Boing. Exactly what it says. It’s a hell of a story. P.S. Consider this a trigger warning. It’s a very rough story.
Kamikaze, streaking from the sky! Crash and burn!
Thus, the fanatical rage-fueled Kamikaze flight of yours truly in 1976, as I pilot the Japanese Zero of my career, teeth-gritting as I arc my aircraft down to destroy itself on the rusting plates of the steampunkish Jules-Vernean battleship that was science-fiction. Impact! Then — a smoking wreckage. The battleship’s sailors chuck the wreck and its crippled pilot overboard, and sing filk songs as they clean up the slightly charred deck. Somehow, the pilot survives….
Although framed by an account of the column he wrote for Carl Bennett’s fanzine in the Seventies, this really is a relentless confessional memoir about trying to have a writing career in the aftermath of sexual abuse, drug use, and wrecked marriages.
(2) ALEX MUI PRESENTS FAN HISTORY IN A WHOLE NEW WAY. [Item by Joe Siclari.] The last FANAC Zoom Fan History of the year is coming up soon. When Alex Mui showed us his first issue in Seattle at the Worldcon, we were charmed and surprised. This historic graphic presentation is both well done and accurate. Tune in to see what we saw and let’s all get an idea of what Alex plans for the future of fanhistory.
FANAC FanHistory Zoom Session: Alex Mui, A Graphic History of Fandom, w/ Edie Stem. Sunday, March 15, 2026, at 2pm Eastern. To attend, contact: [email protected]
Description: Gary Mason, a mainstay of Sydney science fiction in the 60s, found his way to fandom through an unusual route for the time: the comics. His introduction came courtesy of comics great, Roy Thomas, who put him in touch with other Sydney fans…In this interesting session on Sydney and Adelaide science fiction and comics fandom, we learn about the spark struck by the almost accidental visit to Australia by Ed Hamilton and Leigh Brackett, the selective censorship of episodes of Star Trek, and the sad fate of Ron Graham’s Vision of Tomorrow. Gary talks about his life in and out of fandom, being Sydney Science Fiction Foundation newsletter editor, CAPA-alpha central mailer, and ANZAPA OE, and describes how his considerable fanzine collection unexpectedly ended up at Monash University. You’ll hear a little about Australia’s BNFs of the period, including “the most charming and erudite person” amongst them…This is an entertaining anecdotal account of 60 years of fan activity (CAPA-alpha! ANZAPA OBO Editor!) from a comics fan, convention runner and inaugural member of ANZAPA, who still laments the 1960s customs officials confiscating his Creepy and Eerie copies.
(4) CELEBRATING THE MUSIC OF MOORCOCK. [Item by Joel Zakem.] The February 2026 issue of England’s Uncut magazine contains a fairly glowing review of the expanded 50th anniversary reissue of the album The New World’s Fair by Michael Moorcock & Deep Fix (Steve Gilmore and Graham Charnock). While I have not heard this CD reissue, I still own the original LP as well as the “Dodgem Dude /Starcruiser” 45 (which now leads off the 50th anniversary CD). Though, to be honest, I have not listened to either in quite a while.
The print version (but not the one on Uncut’s web page) also contains a short, four question, interview with Moorcock.
…In May 1975, aged 35, he [Moorcock] finally released his debut album with his band The Deep Fix, an apocalyptic space-boogie record that hit just as glam was changing into something else entirely – Bowie was deep in plastic soul, Roxy were busy turning into a pop group, Cockney Rebel had disintegrated and T.Rex were faltering as a commercial proposition.
Those contemporary currents seem less important a half century on, however, and heard on its own merits, The New Worlds Fair is a fascinating snapshot of Moorcock’s blazing, untameable genius. Anchored around the trio of Moorcock on guitar and usually lead vocals, bassist Steve Gilmore and guitarist Graham Charnock, plus a host of guests, the record is woven together by a spoken-word narrative involving a dystopian, sinister fairground and the Dude – a charismatic, doomed hipster in the line of Jerry Cornelius and Ziggy Stardust, a cooler version of Moorcock’s usual Eternal Champion archetype….
Many great writers never did. J.R.R. Tolkien was reportedly awful in lecture halls, speaking in a fast mumble to his necktie. On the other hand, Charles Dickens made a second fortune reading aloud, packing halls at home and abroad with fans who heard him read about Tiny Tim or David Copperfield. Which is why we do readings—they’re a time-tested way to connect with readers. People listen to you, they cry, “But wait, what happens next?” And they zip out and buy your book.
Where Should I Read?
Conventions, both in-person and online, often have a readings track. Many writer or fan organizations offer them. For instance, Strong Women Strange Worlds has monthly readings online. The International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts has a virtual convention every September, and readings are a popular program item.
In-person reading opportunities also abound. The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society has monthly meetings that often feature an author reading. Or how about the KGB in New York, or SFinSF, or the Brooklyn Books & Booze in Brooklyn?…
(6) CON OR BUST. Dream Foundry asks, “Did you know that Con or Bust is our most expensive program?”
Dream Foundry’s Con or Bust program makes direct cash grants to assist with travel, food, registration, and other expenses associated with attending industry events. If you’re a creator or fan of color with an opportunity you can’t afford, reach out! We also collect donated hotel and airline vouchers, convention memberships, and other non-cash items that could support you.
That’s what Gen Alpha and Gen Z want to see onscreen, according to the most recent “Teens & Screens” survey from the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA.
The annual report found that kids and young adults ages 10-24 prefer to see onscreen portrayals of “fathers enjoying parenting” or “fathers showing love to kids” by a 5 to 1 margin vs. those who wanted to see less of those dynamics.
“Young people are not just asking for better dads; they are asking for a reimagining of how men show up in the lives of others. Whether it is a father, mentor, coach, or teacher, the message from the audience was the same,” according to the report’s authors….
At the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA, our answer to that sentiment has always been a resounding “we do.”
Since our inception, we have been dedicated to reimagining the representation of boys and men. In 2020, we released a foundational tip sheet for storytellers that has since moved from research labs into writers’ rooms, directly influencing television production. Most recently, in 2025, we held a narrative change event in partnership with the CAA Foundation and Equimundo, bringing together legacy media creators, game developers, and social media influencers to begin a conversation about building a blueprint for the representation for an evolved masculinity….
…We believed that Gen Alpha and Gen Z cared about the representation of the men they were watching, but the data was sparse. Informed by our youth advisors and professional storytellers, we integrated targeted questions into our annual Teens & Screens survey, which was fielded in August 2025 and surveyed 1,500 adolescents (ages 10–24) across the United States. We present this data for publication in this report.
While we have been committed to this area since our founding, much of the rest of the world is only now waking up to the grave consequences of ignoring the male narrative. For years, creators and executives have operated under the assumption that young male audiences prefer, or at least expect, stoic, independent male heroes. The data from our 2025 snapshot shows that the next generation of viewers is eager for a version of masculinity rooted in connection. By centering emotional vulnerability and active parenting, creators have a rare opportunity to provide the authentic representation that young audiences are actively seeking.
(8) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 154 of the Octothorpe podcast, “At Least I’m Not Just Internet Shopping”, is where “John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty start getting excited to nominate things for the Hugo Awards, and they consequently talk about books and games! They also chat about LAcon V and the upcoming fan funds.”
February 26, 1918 — Theodore Sturgeon. (Died 1985.)
This is not a comprehensive look at Theodore Sturgeon. This is my look at what I truly like. Well sort of.
It is an understatement to say he was a prolific writer. There would be eleven novels, more than one hundred and twenty short stories, and those scripts for Star Trek. And he wrote some four hundred reviews. Keep in mind that he that he only lived to be sixty-seven years old.
Theodore Sturgeon. Photo by Carol DePriest.
I think I’ll start with his Trek scripts as even before I knew that he was the scriptwriter for them, I liked those episodes, “Amok Time” and “Shore Leave”, the latter which is easily in my top ten episodes of this series. I’m not sure how much of his script survived the rewriting first by Coon and then obsessively by Roddenberry. Is his original script published anywhere?
Theresa Peschel notes that he wrote that the screenplay for Studio One’s 1952 adaptation of They Came to Baghdad, a novel that Agatha Christie had written the previous year. She notes “Yet it’s not listed anywhere, including on the semi-comprehensive website devoted to him whose name I can’t remember.”
Now let’s consider his Ellery Queen mystery which was The Player on The Other Side. I’ve read it and it’s quite excellent. It was written from a forty-two page outline by Frederic Dannay, half along with Manfred Bennington of the original Ellery Queen writing alias. I didn’t know if this was the standard practice for these ghostwritten novels but it certainly would make sense if it was so.
It is said that his “Yesterday Was Monday” story was the inspiration for the rebooted Twilight Zone’s “A Matter of Minutes” episode but given that Harlan Ellison and Rockne O’Bannon wrote the script I doubt much of his original story made it to the screen. My opinion of course only.
A second, “A Saucer of Loneliness”, was broadcast in 1986 and was dedicated to his memory. This was directly off a story by him, which first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction in the February 1953 issue.
The Dreaming Jewels which was nominated for a Retro Hugo at The Millennium Philcon for best novella is uneven but worth reading novel none-the-less. I think More Than Human is a much better with more interesting character and a story that actually makes sense all that way through. And other novels I like, well that it’s. I have read others but those are the only ones I liked.
I’ve read more than enough of his short fiction to say that he’s a wonderful writer at it. Noel Sturgeon and Paul Williams have published The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, all thirteen volumes.
So tell what you like from his fiction.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
B.C. gets a glimpse of the future and doesn’t like it.
On Monday night, someone placed a peculiar bet on the prediction market Kalshi. At 7:45 p.m. eastern time, a single trader put down nearly $100,000 on the claim that, by the end of December, the Trump administration will confirm that alien life or technology exists elsewhere in our universe. According to The Atlantic’s review of Kalshi’s trading data, about 35 minutes after this bet was executed, it was followed by another that was almost twice as large (possibly from the same person). These were market-moving events: For one brief stretch, the market appeared to think that there was at least a one-in-three chance that the U.S. government will announce the existence of aliens this year. Perhaps this was just some overexcited UFO diehard with a hunch and money to burn. Or maybe, as some observers quickly noted, it was a trader with inside knowledge.
When this alien-prediction market first opened, in December of last year, it didn’t attract much action: By early this month, only about $1 million had been traded on it, a pittance compared with the $195 million that has so far been wagered on Kalshi for who will be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. But money started pouring in 10 days ago, after Barack Obama was asked, in a podcast interview, whether aliens are real and replied, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen ’em.”Although he later clarified on Instagram that he had meant only to suggest that in our mind-bendingly expansive universe of stars and planets, other life forms are very likely to exist, his remark had already made international headlines.
Trump seemed to get a kick out of Obama’s flub. A few days later, he accused the former president of leaking classified information and, in a post on Truth Social, directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other parts of the federal government to “begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”
It’s possible that Trump was simply delighted by the prospect of a slow-drip document release that has nothing to do with him or Jeffrey Epstein. Either way, his announcement brought even more money into Kalshi’s aliens market. One gambling-industry site published some “X-Files” trading advice: Buy on the rumors of congressional hearings, then sell the moment that officials start dodging questions.
This week’s mysterious and mammoth bets did not get placed until a few days after this flash of interest had mostly gone away. From February 20 to the night of the 23rd, when the peculiar trades occurred, no further alien news was reported, no congressional hearings were held, and no rumors received significant circulation online. Whatever the Monday-night whales (or whale) knew—or thought they knew—it doesn’t seem to have come from the public-information environment, and no one has made bets of that size in the alien-prediction market since…
(12) CHANGING OF GUARD AT XBOX. [Item by Steven French.] It’s all change at Xbox and Keith Stuart wonders what it all means for Microsoft’s creative vision in the latest “Pushing Buttons” newsletter in the Guardian: “Why Xbox’s corporate shake-up matters for everyone who plays games”.
And so it’s all change at Xbox. Last Friday it was announced that the CEO of Microsoft’s gaming division, Phil Spencer, is to retire, while its president Sarah Bond is resigning. In their place, a new partnership: Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is promoted to chief content officer, while the new CEO is Asha Sharma, who moves from her post as president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product.
In a company-wide email, Spencer stated that he would stay on until the summer in an advisory role before, “starting the next chapter of my life”. For her part, Bond issued a statement on her LinkedIn account: “I’ve decided this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally.” It was all extremely good natured, but its doubtful these airy missives tell the full tale….
The UK actors union is encouraging all members to boycott the BBC‘s charter renewal survey due to concerns over its use of artificial intelligence and an “airbrushing” of the workforce.
Equity, which has called the survey “unfit for purpose in either detail or scope,” said it was unhappy that public responses to the survey will be aggregated by AI software.
Equity has also taken issue with “limited themes covered by the questions,” “simplistic framing” and “word limits in free text boxes.” The union, which has 50,000 members, also cited the “airbrushing of the workforce,” noting that there is a lack of focus on freelance workers throughout the survey.
The survey, which is conducted by the UK government’s Culture, Media & Sport (CMS) department, not the BBC, has 32 questions about the future of the corporation as 2027 charter renewal approaches. Questions are around future BBC funding, its missions and growth, amongst others….
Powerful, fierce and the king of the Cretaceous world, Tyrannosaurus rex was the ultimate apex predator. But it was also surprisingly dainty on its feet, according to new research. Findings published in the journal Royal Society Open Science show that when these giant beasts walked and ran, they did so on tiptoes.
The T. rex fossil record is rich and has given us many insights into how these animals hunted and grew. But little is known about one aspect of its locomotion and that is how its foot struck the ground. So a team led by the College of the Atlantic in Maine studied the feet of four well-preserved T. rex specimens….
Originally brought to you in 2020, we are excited to bring you the pitch meeting for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief Pitch Meeting… again!
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Joel Zakem, John A. Arkansawyer, Joe Siclari, John Coxon, 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 Brian Jones.]
“Due is an exceptional speaker – brilliantly insightful, delightfully funny – and deeply generous in her commitment to elevating the craft of speculative fiction writing across media,” said SFWA Executive Director Isis Asare. “She is the perfect toastmaster for the Nebula Awards Conference celebrating N. K. Jemisin as the recipient for the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award and Gay Haldeman as the recipient for the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award.”
A seasoned multimedia creator, Due and her husband/collaborator – Steven Barnes – recently co-directed their first short horror film, The Keeper (Samansa/Blackmaled), which will stream on Samansa in September. They also wrote “A Small Town” for Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire. In addition, they co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan and published by Megascope. Due and Barnes co-host the podcast Lifewriting: Write for Your Life! Due also served as executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.
“It’s such a thrill to be invited to be Toastmaster at the Nebulas, which has such a storied history, especially during a year honoring N. K. Jemisin and Gay Haldeman. Events like this remind us of the power of art to help create hope and change during difficult times,” Due said.
Gearing up to the Nebulas in Chicago. Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes will also participate in author signings, hybrid panels, and in-person craft workshops during the Nebula Awards Conference. Author signings will be open to the public and copies of Due’s work will be available to purchase onsite from local independent bookstore, Call and Response. Hybrid programming will also be available to attendees of Horror Writers Association’s StokerCon as a result of a recent collaboration between HWA and SFWA.
“The Horror Writers Association is pleased to see more collaboration and advancement of partnerships between genre-organizations. We’re excited to offer this unique virtual experience to members of both SFWA and the HWA to encourage virtual participation for both the Nebulas and StokerCon,” stated Maxwell Gold, Executive Director of the Horror Writers Association.
Starting in May, pick up new facsimile editions of JLA/AVENGERS #1-4, the celebrated 2003 Marvel/DC crossover series by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez.
This summer, Marvel Comics and DC Comics join forces to bring JLA/AVENGERS, the 2003 limited series by legendary creators Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, back to comic shops. The history-making four-issue saga will be boldly re-presented in its original form as new Facsimile Editions with original trade tress and wraparound card stock covers. Marvel Comics will publish JLA/AVENGERS #1 (May) and #3 (July) while DC Comics will publish AVENGERS/JLA #2 (June) and #4 (August). The issues will also feature all-new variant covers.
It’s the grandest Marvel and DC comics crossover of them all and an icon-packed event decades in the making! After years of anticipation, JLA/AVENGERS reunited acclaimed writer Kurt Busiek (Marvels) with his AVENGERS collaborator George Pérez – an artistic legend for both companies – to assemble every single member of Earth’s Mightiest and the World’s Greatest in one blockbuster book. Universes collide as the Justice League fights the towering Terminus and the Avengers face the awesome menace of Starro! Each team must undertake an epic quest on the other’s world, with the fate of both realities in the balance!
Preorder JLA/AVENGERS #1 FACSIMILE EDITION at your local comic shop today, and ask to add all four issues to your pull list.
[Click for larger images.]
JLA/AVENGERS #1 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. Variant Cover by RYAN STEGMAN. On Sale 5/27
AVENGERS/JLA #2 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 6/24
JLA/AVENGERS #3 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 7/22
AVENGERS/JLA #4 FACSIMILE EDITION. Written by KURT BUSIEK. Penciled by GEORGE PÉREZ. Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ. On Sale 8/26
(1) KETTER INTERVIEWED ABOUT STATE OF THE UNION. Following Trump’s State of the Union address last night, MSNOW set up reporter Jacob Sorboroff and a camera in DreamHaven Bookstore to ask Greg Ketter what he thought: “Greg Ketter responds to SOTU: ‘I am still angry’”. And you can view a complete clip here on Facebook.
(2) SONG OF DOPE AND FIRE. Christopher Lockett’s high-concept discussion of “George R.R. Martin vs. Destiny” takes a side trip into an impressive mashup titled “A Song of Ice and The Wire”.
That GoT was not a departure for HBO but a doubling-down on the conventions that defined its most critically acclaimed shows was hilariously articulated by a still-extant Tumblr page called “A Song of Ice and The Wire”—which, as the title suggests, mashes up elements of GoT and The Wire. Specifically, it took stills from each series and captioned them with appropriate lines from the other….
…The subtle genius of these mashups is that they highlight at once the profound, almost antithetical differences between the series—one a scrupulously realistic sociological portrait of American urban decay, systemic racism, and broken institutions, and the other a work of high fantasy set in a premodern world of knights and dragons—while identifying the structural consonance, one they share with the other series cited above. This consonance is perhaps best articulated in a line spoken by the detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) in season one: “You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.” Money is power in The Wire—not so much in the sense of more money=more power, but that money is the concrete representation of power’s circulatory qualities, especially considering it respects no boundaries. This principle is even more succinctly articulated in season three by stick-up artist Omar Little (Michael K. Williams6), perhaps the best character on the show, who makes his living robbing drug dealers. He helpfully supplements Freamon’s wisdom with an axiom of his own. When he robs a high-stakes poker game featuring some of the Baltimore underworld’s high rollers, the future drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield says, “That’s my money.” To which Omar responds, in what could function as Cliff’s Notes Foucault, “Money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.”…
Science fiction has an uncanny history of foretelling scientific advancement, predicting technological breakthroughs, ranging from tablets to holograms, and even defining the public’s understanding of complex scientific phenomenon. Since its earliest iterations, a fierce debate has raged amongst cinephiles and scientists alike over the extent of the genre’s scientific influence. Most notably is sci-fi’s influence over the public’s understanding of complex scientific concepts. Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than the realm of space travel, in which films like “Woman in the Moon” (1929) by legendary Austrian director Fritz Lang have proven incredibly prescient, serving as the first popular representation of everything from rocket countdowns and lunar orbits to the politics surrounding modern space races….
…What really makes the film standout to modern viewers, however, is its scientific prescience. To ensure accuracy, Lang became one of the first directors to employ a team of scientists, soliciting the help of rocket scientist Hermann Oberth, who’d later be instrumental in developing Nazi Germany’s V-2 rocket program, and influential science writer Willy Ley. Together, they created a story that foretold modern space flight, becoming the first film to depict zero-gravity, multi-stage rockets, figure-8 lunar landing trajectories, and g-force-laden liftoffs. It even popularized our conception of rocket launches, complete with detailed checklists and momentous countdowns. As Lang told Peter Bogdanovic in a 1965 interview published in his book “Who The Devil Made It,” the countdown was born out of “dire necessity” to build narrative suspense (via TCM). Unfortunately, the film’s realism runs out once the rocket lands upon the moon, depicting a breathable atmosphere, Earth-like gravity, and a surface rife with riches. However, the fantastical ending doesn’t diminish the fact that many of the defining images of space flight were born on a German screen….
(4) NOW ONLINE: ‘MIDWEST SIDE STORY’. Geri Sullivan announced today on Facebook that thanks to Guy Spiller, David Dyer-Bennet, and FANAC.org the video of the performance of Midwest Side Story at Minicon 12 in 1977 is up on the FANAC YouTube channel: “Minicon 12 (1977) – Midwest Side Story”. (There’s a cast list and some other details on Geri’s Facebook page.)
Description:
Midwest Side Story is a rare recording of that entertaining subgenre of fannish endeavors – the fannish musical. First performed on April 9, 1977 at Minicon in Minneapolis, the recording was preserved in the Scott Imes Video archive, and kept safe for many years by Scott Imes, Jeff Schalles and Corwin Brust.
Midwest Side Story is set in an alternate universe where the 1973 Worldcon is held in Minneapolis. It takes place in an alternate Minneapolis where fanzine fans and convention fans behave like rival gangs The musical is a love story between a fanzine femmefan and a male convention fan. If you want more, you’ll have to watch the show. It’s funny, it’s thoughtful and it has a great ending. Just remember this was written about 50 years ago, and has the expected cultural attitudes of the time. The recording is captioned for your convenience….
(5) WAPO’S BOOK WORLD MOURNED. The New York Times attends “A Wake for The Washington Post’s Book World”. Link bypasses the NYT paywall. Photo of Michael Dirda speaking leads off the article.
Hundreds gathered on Saturday evening in Washington, D.C., to mourn Book World, The Washington Post’s books section, which was shuttered this month amid widespread layoffs at the organization.
Journalists, policy wonks, speechwriters and erstwhile political aides packed the main branch of Politics and Prose, the storied bookstore, to hear former staff members and others commemorate what Marie Arana, a longtime editor of the section, called “a vanished gem.” She spoke alongside such former marquee critics and writers as Ron Charles, Michael Dirda and Carlos Lozada (now a New York Times Opinion columnist) — a “formidable cavalcade of smarts,” as she put it.
“We find ourselves battling book bans, the trivialization of truth, the bashing of serious journalism,” Arana said. “And now The Washington Post, once one of the most respected journalistic institutions in America, is enduring a mass demolition like no other.”…
… The journalist and scholar Warren Bass, a former Book World editor and one of the organizers of the tribute, read statements on behalf of what he described as “three titans of The Washington Post.” One was Martin Baron, a former chief editor of the news organization.
“It is difficult to contemplate, and hard to forgive, a decision to sever The Post’s relationship with books,” Baron wrote.
Merilyn Francis, an expert in health policy who has lived in Washington for the past 20 years, attended the event even though she said she only occasionally read Book World. “It was a really good section to see not only all these different writings, but people’s perspectiveon them,” she said. The writing, she added, had “a lot of relevance into what was going on in the community.”
Saturday’s event was the rare funeral with a question-and-answer session at the end…..
…The event felt as much like a referendum on the state of American journalism as a memorial. More than 300 journalists were laid off from The Post this month, and many of them were in the audience on Saturday night, greeting each other in a stupor after the event….
A few weeks ago, I found out on social media that I had lost my job as science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. I’ve been meaning to write about it for my newsletter ever since, but I needed time to collect my thoughts — and I didn’t just want to rehash what everyone else was already saying.
I really loved that gig, and I’m still feeling kinda bereft. I’ve written before about how invigorating it was to be paid to keep tabs on everything being published in science fiction and fantasy, and to read a decent selection of the new books coming out every month. I felt like a part of the SFF community in a whole different way. Plus that gig forced me to spend a lot of time reading cool stories instead of looking at upsetting news online. Being able to shout out amazing new books by lesser known authors felt like a way to give back and to help keep genre fiction healthy and exciting. …
…Part of the job of a book critic is making critical judgments — because I only had 200 words per book, or sometimes fewer if I was reviewing more books, I mostly reviewed books for the Post which I’d either loved or enjoyed with some reservations. If I’d had more space, or had been reviewing a single book at a greater length, I might have written more harsh reviews. But even in that short space with limited ability to get into the weeds, I still tried my best to offer thoughts about how the book was using narrative devices, and how well they worked. …
Post-Harry Potter, star Daniel Radcliffe has taken on no shortage of singular projects, playing anyone from a flatulent corpse (Swiss Army Man) to a gun-toting computer programmer (Guns Akimbo), but there’s one pitch that stands out as “one of the worst” he’s ever heard.
While guesting on Hot Ones ahead of his Broadway return in Every Brilliant Thing and the premiere of comedy The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins, the Kill Your Darlings actor was asked about bizarre or unique pitches he’s agreed to take on. The question made him call back the memory of a particularly horrendous pitch for the Harry Potter trio.
“One of the worst ideas that I’ve ever heard: During Potter, somebody came to us and, I think, asked — like they wanted to cast all three of us — me, Emma [Watson] and Rupert [Grint] — in a remake of Wizard of Oz, where Emma was Dorothy, I can’t remember what Rupert was and I just remember I was going to be the lion, but also, he knew karate. I was like a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion,” Radcliffe said.
He added, “I was like 14 or 15, and I was like, ‘I don’t know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea. This should not be made.’”…
(8) CARVER FUNERAL INFO. [Item by Mickey Mikkelsen.] Author and Nebula Award nominee, Jeffrey A. Carver passed away on February 6 as a result of his quest for a lung transplant. The family reached out to me this morning as his funeral is set for March 14th and there will be a zoom option. Jeffrey was an incredible staple in the science fiction community
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
February 25, 1971 — Sean Astin, 55.
Let’s talk about Sean Astin who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of The Rings films. I’ll admit that he was one of my favorite hobbits in the trilogy and Sean did a sterling job of bringing his character to life here, didn’t he? I’ll also admit that I’d completely forgotten that he wasn’t in The Hobbit as in I tend to think that the hobbits in The Hobbit were the same as those who were in the trilogy.
Before The Lord of The Rings, he showed in his first film playing Mikey Walsh in The Goonies. No, not genre (remember My Birthday Write-up, my rules what gets included here) but a really fine YA treasure hunt adventure in which everyone has fun. Well not everyone.
He has a lead role in Toy Soldiers, a film I still have an odd fond spot for, as William “Billy” Tepper. Damn I liked those toy soldiers. I even had some of the action figures a long time ago.
He was Stuart Conway in a film named after a time travel device called Slipstream that was stolen by a group of bank robbers. Might be interesting to see. Any of you seen it?
He voiced Shazam in a pair of animated DC films, Justice League: War and Justice League: Atlantis, almost proving there are might be too many DC animated films, though I have seen the second one and it’s rather well done. Look he even did a Lego one!
In the Department of Films That I Never Knew Existed Off Novels I Never Knew Were Written is Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic, which proves how prolific he was or how bad my memory is, at any rate Sean is Twoflower here.
Dorothy and the Witches of Oz is a 2012 series of a decade ago which apparently covered The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Road to Oz and The Magic of Oz. Somewhere in there, he was Frack Muckadoo, a servant of Princess Langwidere.
He even got to voice Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants series.
I think the last thing I’ll mention is that he showed up in a brief recurring role on The Big Bang Theory series as Dr. Greg Pemberton, one of a team of Fermi-Lab physicists who accidentally confirmed the Super-Asymmetry paper published by Sheldon and Amy. Wasn’t that an amazingly fantastic series?
Yes, there’s other kibbles and bits which I’m sure you’ll point out, but I need tea now.
(11) MARVEL’S ‘WHAT IF?’ IS 50. For 50 years, Marvel Comics has dared to ask WHAT IF?, putting bold twists on major Marvel moments and opening the floodgates to the multiverse! To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original What If? series, Marvel will publish eight all-new WHAT IF…? one-shots this summer. Crafted by some of today’s biggest talents, the new one-shots shake the foundations of every corner of the Marvel mythos beginning with startling stories starring the X-Men and Thor and continuing with epic reimaginings of pivotal storylines like Secret Wars and Kraven’s Last Hunt.
The new one-shots kick off in June with WHAT IF…? UNCANNY X-MEN #1, where Gerry Duggan and Jan Bazaldua put a spin on one of comics’ most tragic love stories, and WHAT IF…? THOR #1,which sees Torunn Grønbekk and Sergio Dávila shift symbiote history towards a mighty new destiny!
WHAT IF…? UNCANNY X-MEN #1. Written by GERRY DUGGAN. Art by JAN BAZALDUA
WHAT IF…CYCLOPS HAD STAYED WITH MADELYNE PRYOR?
Imagine a world where Madelyne Pryor, the Goblin Queen, had survived the Inferno. What would have happened if Cyclops had saved her soul. What would have happened if he and Maddie had raised their son, Nathan Summers? What would that world look like? And why would that be the most terrible thing to happen to mutantdom and Earth itself?
WHAT IF…? THOR #1. Written by TORUNN GRØNBEKK. Art by SERGIO DÁVILA
WHAT IF…THOR GOT SPIDER-MAN’S SYMBIOTE SUIT?
Amid the chaos, there comes a costume – but not to the hero you know! Legend has it that bonding with the symbiote suit made Thor mightier still. But what shadows lurking in the Ten Realms would take interest in such a powerful pairing?
Check out the full lineup along with Lucas Werneck’s first two covers and stay tuned for more details in the months ahead.
Roger Sweet — the toy designer who created the He-Man character in the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” 1980s animated kids’ show — is suffering from dementia … and according to his wife, he’s unable to afford the necessary care.
Marlene Sweet — who has been married to Roger for nearly 40 years — launched a GoFundMe to help with the $10,200-a-month bill for Roger’s memory care facility….
(13) THE EYE HAS IT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “The Evolution of Eyes Began With One” in the New York Times. Link bypasses NYT paywall. “Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head.”
…In 1994, scientists didn’t know enough about those microscopic details to develop a hypothesis for how they evolved as well. Three decades later, that’s no longer the case. “There’s lots of molecular data now that we can use that is extremely powerful,” Dr. Nilsson said.
He and other vision experts have now joined forces to develop a hypothesis for how vertebrate eyes evolved….
…“What we’ve done is, we’ve provided a plausible set of steps that got us there,” Dr. Baden said.
The scenario starts about 560 million years ago, when our invertebrate ancestors lived mostly buried in the ocean floor. They stuck out their brainless heads to filter bits of food floating by….
It’s getting really intense between Mars and Earth, as we can see in the full Season 5 trailer forFor All Mankind dropped Tuesday by Apple.
Season 5 picks up in the alt-2010s with President Bragg (Randy Oglesby) declaring “My administration will put Earth back in charge.” But Mars is having none of that.
The sci-fi series returns for its fifth season on March 27.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mickey Mikkelsen, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) today named the finalists for the 2026 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. One of these five authors will win $1,000 for Best First Novel:
This year’s finalists are:
All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
The Book of Lost Hours by Hayley Gelfuso
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: A Novel by Andrew Ludington
The award includes a check for $1,000 for the novel’s author and an invitation to be the Compton Crook Guest of Honor at Balticon (the BSFS annual convention) for two years. This year, Balticon will be held May 22-25, 2026 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland.
Members of BSFS selected the finalists by reading and rating debut novels published between Nov 1, 2024 and October 31, 2025. The finalist round of reading and rating will close April 10 and the winner will be notified on Sunday, April 12. BSFS will announce the winner to the public later that week.
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has been giving out the Compton Crook Award for best first novel since 1983. Past winners include: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark, The Space Between Worlds by Michaiah Johnson, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, and Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon. Last year’s winner was The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills.
The award is for an author’s debut solo novel in the science fiction, fantasy, or horror genres. The author can have published books in other genres, collaborations, or novellas and still have a new novel qualify.
BSFS created this award to honor new writers in the field and to recognize those who often struggle for years to write and publish their first novel. The Award was named in memory of Towson State College Professor of Natural Sciences Compton Crook, who wrote under the name Stephen Tall, and who 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.
BSFS thanks the authors and publishers who sent books for consideration. Reading and rating books for the 2027 award will begin summer of 2026. For more information contact [email protected].
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 running Balticon since 1967.
The festival features a comprehensive lineup of screenings, post-film discussions, and screenwriting competitions. It honors the legacy of the prolific sci-fi writer by showcasing independent storytelling that explores the intersection of technology and reality. Passes and access to competitions are available here.
“PKD, more than any of the writers of his era, foresaw the disorienting and dehumanizing aspect of techno-reality,” said festival founder and director Daniel Abella. “He left us clues in his writing as to how to fight the invasion, and this year, numerous films on our lineup represent his prophetic message.”
The International Booker Prize 2026 longlist was announced on February 24. The 13 titles were selected from among 128 books submitted by publishers. The Prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026.
The titles were chosen by a judging panel including author Natasha Brown (chair); writer, broadcaster and Oxford University Professor of Mathematics and for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy; International Booker Prize–shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes; writer, Lolwe editor, and bookseller Troy Onyango; and novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy.
The longlisted titles are:
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin (Scribe)
We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers (New Directions)
The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay (New Vessel)
The Deserters by Mathias Énard, translated from French by Charlotte Mandell (New Directions)
Small Comfort by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (HarperCollins, forthcoming September 1, 2026)
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel (Sandorf Passage)
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin (Summit)
On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan (Charco, U.K. edition)
The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre, translated from Italian by Antonella Lettieri (Foundry, U.K. edition)
The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump (Vintage)
Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh (Syracuse UP)
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (New Directions)
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf)
Two of the books are of genre interest:
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn
Based on an infamous 17th-century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.
The Witch by Marie NDiaye
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mother was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes, but more often she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.
Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach 12 years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
Witty, dreamlike, unsettling and enchanting, The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.
A shortlist of six books will be announced on March 31. Each shortlisted title will be awarded a prize of £5,000, split evenly between author and translator. The announcement of the winning book will take place on Tuesday, May 19 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.
(1) OKORAFOR WINS NCAAP IMAGE. Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Death of the Author won the 2026 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction. See the announcement on the “57th NAACP Image Awards Virtual Pre-Show Night One” at the 18:25 mark.
Nnedi Okorafor receives NCAAP Image Award. Photo by Nollywood director Tchidi Chikere.
(2) NOTES ON LTUE. [Item by David Doering.] John Hertz kindly upbraided me for not keeping File 770 updated on our annual Life, the Universe, & Everything event here in Provo. I definitely need to repent, as we had a fabulous time–all 1300+ of us–with Ron Clements of Disney, Matt Dinniman, and Charlie Holmberg. Already planning for next year under our new non-profit “Light the Fire Foundation” auspices.
Here’s the over 600 teens, YA, and us seasoned folk showing Matt Dinniman how everyone has a hard-copy of his latest book. Who says reading dead tree editions is over???
I’ve volunteered with several organizations; at least one has proved disillusioning. Yet many large creative projects and events require unpaid labor of love. Otherwise, nonprofits would go bankrupt in a matter of months.
A few scandals have plagued popular writing organizations. Who bears the emotional brunt, in addition to any victims? The volunteers. That experience inevitably leads to burnout, that loss of energy and willpower to engage in such creative activities. …
…The scandal that changed my relationship with NaNoWriMo emerged in 2023, and the emotional fallout still wreaks havoc years later….
…Many former volunteers and I have talked about how much we put into NaNoWriMo. Local members in my group have voted on a new Discord server name, but the previous unity has evaporated. We keep missing each other when scheduling write-ins….
Sridhar discusses six helpful steps. Here are the first two:
…Some steps align, however, with treating burnout in general. No solution is one-size-fits-all; recovering requires strategy.
Commiserate. Chances are, you aren’t the only disappointed volunteer. Large organizations have large groups. Due to the law of averages, you can find people in the same boat as you: disappointed and burned out. Knowing you aren’t alone makes a huge difference.
When the NaNo news broke, so did the official volunteer server. In fact, it had to shut down for legal reasons. If you can meet in person, I’ve found that gathering to commiserate over hot food is therapeutic. I generally go for locally made pizza. Hot food is generally key; if you’re not a pizza person, ramen that accommodates lifestyle choices and allergies is another option. The reason I think this works? Because hot food warms you from head to toe and allows you to relax while feeling catharsis. You can open up about what’s been troubling you.
Grieve. Accept that you won’t be okay for a while. A cause you believed in failed you. It’s okay to not be okay with that anguish. Feeling frustrated with the subsequent hurt and exhaustion is perfectly normal….
There’s a door in the alley that people only seem to enter but never leave. There’s an old woman stirring her coffee with a spoon that you could have sworn was a fork a second ago. There’s a shadow on the wall that doesn’t seem to match its owner.
Perhaps you’ve experienced a moment like this, where you witnessed something that can’t quite be explained away. Urban fantasy is the genre that invites us to dwell on those everyday moments and ask ourselves: What if that old woman really were a magician? What if that door really were charmed? More grounded than high fantasy, with its swords and dragons, urban fantasy sets speculative stories in the cities of our world (or something closely resembling it), exploring the possibility that the mundane byways of reality can in fact be where magic exists.
Here are 10 novels where the real world is enchanted….
When a story opens with a boy seeing a raccoon with its tail on fire and a man feeding a tooth into a parking meter, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Leopold Berry is a California teen who is “average absolutely to the decimal point.” But when he starts seeing things that seem to come straight out of a 1990s fantasy television show called “Max’s Adventures in Sunderworld,” he learns that Sunder is not only real, but also in grave danger. Riggs’s intimate knowledge of Los Angeles transforms this urban jungle into a place where dark magic whispers from every alley.
The Short: I just read an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of The Best of Adrian Tchaikovsky, scheduled for release on February 28, 2026, Subterranean. It’s noted as available in hardcover and e-book. It’s hefty, 37 stories and over 600 pages of SF, fantasy, and “weird fiction”. Picking favorites is hard, but I especially loved the great short stories “Crossed Gates“, from Breakout, Nick Gevers editor, 2015 PS Publishing (it features trains), and “Difficult Times“, a short story, NewScientist December 2020 (music and a surprise to me). It has strong essay content, featuring both section/story essays by Tchaikovsky and a good introduction by John Scalzi. I like the “Author’s Note: What’s Not Here” by Tchaikovsky, which is great for a “Best of” collection. My overall, average rating for the stories was 3.75/5, or “Very good”. I enjoyed this a lot. Recommended….
In Lord of Light, published in 1967, Roger Zelazny wrote about a swordfight between the Buddha and the God of Death where both combatants quote ancient scripture at each other while trying to achieve philosophical clarity through mutual annihilation. Reminds me of social media sometimes…
In the book, colonists from a dead Earth use technology to become the Hindu pantheon. They control who gets reborn and as what, using a psych-probe that reads your entire mental history and a karma system that makes modern social credit scores look quaint. They suppress the printing press, gunpowder, indoor plumbing….
Then they remind you the reason why the CIA stole it.
A 60’s sci-fi novel about gods who suppress technology to maintain power, whose screenplay was stolen by an intelligence agency and used to rescue people from a theocratic revolution. You couldn’t make it up if ya tried….
US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Monday it had uncovered campaigns by three Chinese AI firms to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot, in what it described as industrial-scale intellectual property theft. OpenAI leveled similar charges last month.
Anthropic said DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax used a technique known as “distillation” – using outputs from a more powerful AI system to rapidly boost the performance of a less capable one.
“These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” the company said in a statement. “The window to act is narrow.”
Distillation is a common practice within AI development, often used by companies to create cheaper, smaller versions of their own models….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 24, 1957 — Edward James Olmos, 69.
Where I first experienced the acting of Edward James Olmos was as Detective Gaff in Blade Runner, a role I see he reprised in Blade Runner 2049.
Edward James Olmos
No, I’ve not seen the latter film, nor do I have any intention in doing so as I consider Blade Runner one of the finest SF films ever done and nothing will sully that for me. We gave it a Hugo at ConStellation, so there later films!
It wasn’t his first genre film as that was the Japanese post-apocalyptic science fiction film Virus (1980), but his first important role came in Wolfen (1981), a fascinating horror film about, possibly, the idea that werewolves are real, or maybe not, in which he was Eddie Holt who claims to a shapeshifter.
He has an almost cameo appearance in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues as a musician at the barbecue.
It was supposed to have a theatrical release but that was not to be, so Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit was released directly to video. In it Olmos was Vámonos. I’ve not seen it. It sounds, well, intriguing. Who’s seen it?
Edward James Olmost in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
He’s in the debacle that was The Green Hornet in one of the primary roles as Mike Axford, the managing editor of The Daily Sentinel.
As you most likely know, he was William Adama on the rebooted Battestar Galactica. At seventy-three episodes, it didn’t even come close to his run on Miami Vice as Lt. Martin Castillo which was one hundred and six episodes. Now there was an interesting character!
Olmos as Adama in Battlestar Galactica
I’ll end this Birthday note by note noting he had a recurring role on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Robert Gonzales.
Bookbinders and restorers in the 1930s and ’40s used their craft to help the Nazi regime create a database that was used to persecute and kill Jews and others who were deemed racially impure, a British researcher has found.
Key to building this database were church, civil and synagogue records, which were often hundreds of years old and damaged beyond legibility when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
By tasking professionals with cleaning up these documents, which held information about millions of people, the Nazis gained access to generations’ worth of material — which they used to target specific population groups, the new research shows.
The findings are the result of more than two decades of work by Morwenna Blewett, an expert in conservation history.
She was working as a conservation fellow at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in 2004 when a question came to her: What had happened to the art restorers who did not flee Nazi Germany during World War II?
She pondered the question while sorting through an old filing cabinet in the museum’s basement — where, as she recalled in a book published this month, “Art Restoration Under the Nazi Regime: Revelation and Concealment,” the “warm, dark air smelt faintly of cigarettes, coffee and engine oil.”
Soon, she had expanded on her query: “How did the Nazi regime intend to use conservation and restoration to achieve its aims?”
The answer, she discovered, was that paper restorers and bookbinders in Nazi Germany had helped the regime track down people’s Jewish ancestry by conserving and cleaning up old records from churches, as well as from synagogues and civil registers.
Dr. Blewett said that, by publishing her book, she hoped to shed light on this part of the Holocaust, which she called “one of the longest and most insidious of all National Socialism’s projects to exploit the field of conservation and restoration.”
Her focus on bookbinders and restorers reinforces the idea that the Nazis were helped “from the ground up” by many disparate facets of German society.
“It just gives us the cogs of how the regime relied on myriad professions and myriad methods in their move toward genocide,” Dr. Blewett said in a phone interview….
The blue hue has been spotted across Lincolnshire over the past few nights
Is it a UFO? Is it the Northern Lights? No, it’s the “Flying Banana”.
A blue glow that has lit up Lincolnshire’s night sky in recent weeks has been traced to an unlikely source: a bright yellow train.
Network Rail said the mysterious light comes from its new measurement train – nicknamed the Flying Banana – which looks for faults on the line for engineers to repair.
The company said on hazy nights, equipment from the yellow train can create a blue glow “that looks like something from the X-Files” as it tests overhead lines.
“But it’s not flying saucers,” a spokesperson said. “Just our Flying Banana helping to keep trains running reliably.”
The bright blue glow has been spotted across the county, including from stations such as Metheringham….
If The Addams Family was a science fiction show, “Thing” might look something like this.
Researchers have developed a robotic hand that can not only skitter about on its fingertips, it can also bend its fingers backward, connect and disconnect from a robotic arm and pick up and carry one or more objects at a time, researchers report January 20 in Nature Communications. With its unusual agility, it could navigate and retrieve objects in spaces too confined for human hands….
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, David Doering, Cliff Ramshaw, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
The winners of the BAFTA Awards 2026 were unveiled by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts on February 22.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s dark comedy One Battle After Another led the field, winning six of its 14 nominations, including Best Film, genre works were well-represented in other categories.
Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku won Supporting Actress. Ryan Coogler also won Original Screenplay, and Ludwig Göransson won Original Score.
Frankenstein won for Production Design, Costume Design, and Make Up and Hair.
Avatar: Fire and Ash took the award for Special Visual Effects.
