Science Fiction News
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Editorial Comment & Staff Stuff
EDITORIAL COMMENT We informed you thusly. This is the second season we started the news page's editorial with 'We take no pleasure in telling you 'we told you so'!' As we reported a year before the event the Glasgow Worldcon organisers had warned that folk were registering for the convention at a high rate. And then its Progress Report 4 alerted us that they may need to cap registrations. All of which begs the question as to why, in the third-of-a-year run up to the event, they took out a series of full-page, inside-cover adverts in SFX magazine!!!!? Didn't they have anyone senior on the convention's organising committee that learned from the overcrowded 2017 Helsinki Worldcon or even the fan ire?
STAFF STUFF A few of us were at the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow. Much jollity, some engagement with the programme, a heck of a lot of socialising, catching up with old acquaintances and making new ones; possibly a bit too much partying was done… Much thanks to the generous Gollancz, Orbit and Tor teams for their respective evening get-togethers. We have some Glasgow Worldcon news coverage below starting here and we hope to have at least one stand-alone con report (conrep) next season. Jonathan's next BIG project finally moves. Those of us more associated with SF² Concatenation mission control have been aware that Jonathan has been down in the dumps for a while now as his next big project, which took six years to research and draft, and then became stuck in peer review. However, after nearly two years awaiting the final referee report, it is on the go again, hopefully to completion: fingers crossed. More news as and when, except he says that his new work is a move away from global warming as, after two decades looking at that topic, it was apparently becoming a tad depressing. (Who knew?) His new subject area is more deep-time evolution focussed but has a very real present-day relevance and, indeed, speaks to some exobiology and so is of possible interest to the SFnally inclined who are also into science…. Meanwhile, Arthur has a new book out as does one of our former book reviewers Allen Stroud. Arthur also has had a short-story, 'Well Off The Beaten Track', selected to appear in the forthcoming anthology 11th BHF Book Of Horror Stories.
Elsewhere this issue…
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Key SF News & SF Awards
The 2024 Hugo Awards were announced at this year's Worldcon I Glasgow. This year, 3,436 valid final ballots were received, back to a reasonable level after last year's 1,674 ballots but still a little down from the 3,587 valid ballots received when the Worldcon was last (2014) in Britain.
Once again we are not listing all the results but only those categories of likely interest to the broader SF community (few, outside of the Worldcon community will know who editors, fans, artists, etc are, but they will likely have heard of best-selling novels, films, TV programmes. The 2024 Locus Awards for 2023 works short-lists have been announced. The principal SF (excluding things like short story, fantasy, etc) categories were: The 2024 Arthur C. Clarke (SF) Award short-list has been announced for 2023 works. These are: The 2024 Nebula Award winners have been announced. As usual we only list the major categories (and those that are more easily accessible this side of the Pond). The 2024 Dragoncon Award winners have been announced. As usual we only list the major categories (and those that are more easily accessible this side of the Pond).
Another Hugo Awards shenanigan…! The Hugos have once more seen an attempt to game the Awards! Fortunately this year, unlike last year, the attempt was unsuccessful and foiled by this year's Hugo subcommittee of the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon. In the course of tallying the votes on the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon Hugo Administration team detected some unusual data. Those registered to attend the Worldcon have the right to vote on the short-lists for the various categories of the Hugo. Large number of votes were cast by accounts that failed to meet the criteria of being 'natural persons', with obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics. These included, for instance, a run of voters whose second names were identical except that the first letter was changed, in alphabetical order; and a run of voters whose names were translations of consecutive numbers. The administration team concluded that at least 377 votes had been cast fraudulently, of a total of 3,813 final ballot votes received. They therefore disqualified those 377 votes from the final vote tally. Many of these votes favoured one finalist in particular.
Hugo Awards from the 2023 Worldcon reportedly missing! Yes, more Chengdu Worldcon debacle: Chengdu, the gift that keeps on giving. Half a year on from the event a sizeable number of the 'Hugo winners' (remember from last season the 2023 Hugo Awards were discovered to have been fixed) in N. America have not received their Awards. ++++ Previous news coverage of the 2023 China, Chengdu, Worldcon on this site includes: The first Hugo Award ever presented, given to Forrest J. Ackerman by Isaac Asimov at the 1953 Worldcon, was acquired by Worldcon Heritage Organisation. The Award was submitted to bidding at Hindman Auctions (USA) and might have been bought by a private buyer. The Worldcon Heritage Organisation said that fans pledged US$12,350 (£9,930) towards a community effort to add the award to the exhibits shown at Worldcons. The total sale price was $12,065 (£9,700). Forrest J. Ackerman">Forrest Ackerman died at the end of 2008 and was presented with the Award at the 1953 Worldcon. The Worldcon Heritage Organisation regularly puts on a display of some past Hugo Award trophies at SF Worldcons. UK Eastercon 2024 report. The 2024 British national SF convention, Levitation, Eastercon, has produced an organisers' report on the event. This is probably the first time in decades that an Eastercon organising committee has produced a report so quickly – within a quarter of a year of the event! The 2024 Glasgow Worldcon has been held. Over 7,000 attended (7,081 badges were reportedly issued at the venue) for the five-day event that saw an incredible 19-parallel programme streams, and that's not including autographing or meet-the-author sessions. A little over 600 attended virtually. According to the con's website (viewed at the end of the convention) 9,872 were registered. So presumably there were a good number of no show registrants. The 2024 Glasgow Worldcon had a fair bit of science in its programme. Following last year's science programme desert at the Chengdu Worldcon (which was incredibly even smaller than the 2021 Washington Worldcon's science programme) it was a welcome return to a decent-sized, albeit panel dominated, science programme, though not quite as big as the 2014 London Worldcon science programme. Once more, the single largest part (about 40%) of the science programme was devoted to space and cosmology related items, with all the other science, technology, engineering and maths/medicine (STEM) disciplines taking up the remainder. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon Business Meeting took place. Actually, this was the WSFS (World SF Society) Business Meeting as it is under the auspices of WSFS that the annual Worldcons are held. There was an awful lot of business to get through due to a number of motions made the previous year at the Chengdu Worldcon's Business Meeting that saw much, ill-informed and/or poorly thought out debate from Chengdu's many first-time Worldcon attendees that could not be easily countered due to the very few experienced Worldcon regulars that went to that Worldcon let alone its business meeting. There's not the space to go through it all here, but here are a few of the more of this year's interesting items… The 2025 Worldcon to return to having a solid film programme. Following the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon's lame film programme (zero screenings, just fan panels) the 2025 Worldcon to be held in Seattle is dedicating a room for the entire five days to SF film screenings. While this will not be as significant as the 2010 Worldcon's film programme (three rooms dedicated to film screenings) this is a significant return to the Worldcon film programmes enjoyed in a number of the 1970's, '80s and '90s Worldcons. As is evident from the Hugo nomination statistics, over the years up to the present, for the Best Dramatic Presentation Long-Form as well as the recent film poll conducted by the Glasgow Worldcon, there is a substantive hunger for independent and art-house cinematic offerings. The 2025 Worldcon film programme will be organised by FilmFreeway. The one hit of concernis that there seems to be a film submission fee. This suggests that the film programme may only be amateur productions. Let's hope that the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle has a budget to screen some SF from independent studios. The 2026 Worldcon site selection saw Los Angles win. It was the only serious bid and it won 452 out of 531 votes with other votes going to the usual fun/spoof bids. The announcement was made at this year's Worldcon in Glasgow. Its Guests of Honour are: Barbara Hambly (novelist), Ronald D. Moore (TV screenwriter), Colleen Doran (writer and artist), Anita Sengupta (aerospace engineer), Tim Kirk (illustrator), Stan Sakai (comic illustrator), Ursula Vernon (illustrator) and Geri Sullivan (fan). LAcon V will be the he 84th Worldcon. The 2028 Worldcon bid for Brisbane, Australia, is still alive! After a couple of years of it being very quiet, with just a social media presence, this bid has resurfaced with a website -- www.brisbane28.org. This Worldcon, if it wins the bid, will run Thursday the 24th to Monday the 28th of August, 2028. It will be the fifth Aussiecon, after Melbourne in 1975, 1985, 1999 and 2010. The venue will be the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in South Brisbane, right next to Southbank Parklands. Occasional directory of active amateur press associations (apae) is now out. Blue Moon Special (formerly Active APAs) has a new edition out. It has been 15 years since the previous edition. The oldest APA (amateur press association) was first established in 1937 and is still going strong. There are well over a score of APAs listed. People involved in apae not listed who would like their APA to be included are encouraged to visit tinyurl.com/apa-list, or e-mail kalel[-at-]well[-dot-]com and submit details for inclusion in a subsequent edition. And finally…. Future SF Worldcon bids and seated Worldcons currently running with LGBT+ freedom percentage (Equaldex.com ) scores in bold, include for:-
2025 Future seated SF Eurocons and bids currently running with their LGBT+ freedom percentage (Equaldex.com ) scores in bold, include:-
- Rotterdam, Netherlands (2024) (now a seated Eurocon) 82%
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Film News
What are the most profitable SF films of all time? To do this one needs two things: i) each films profitability and its profitability in real terms adjusted for inflation since it was released. Here, the website filmsite.org has done the heavy lifting. The most profitable film of all time (so far) is Gone With the Wind (1939) but in the top five are two genre films: Star Wars (1977) at second place and ET The Extra-Terrestrial at fourth place. The original Star Wars trilogy's original release version is being restored by fans. In 1997 director George Lucas released the Special Edition of the films for the trilogy’s 20th anniversary including having it re-titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope . Since then, original versions of the trilogy have become scarce. Now the fan group, Team Negative One, have reportedly almost completely digitally restored the original cuts in 4K using 35-millimeter prints of the original trilogy. Wallace and Gromit to return this Christmas in Vengeance Most Fowl feature film. Ben Whitehead will again play Wallace, having taken on the role following the death of Last Of The Summer Wine actor Peter Sallis who had voiced the character up to his death in 2017. Vengeance Most Fowl will see the return of the evil penguin Feathers McGraw last seen in The Wrong Trousers (1993) having served his prison sentence. Meanwhile Wallace has developed a 'smart gnome' that seems to have a mind of its own. Comedian Peter Kay, who was in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, returns as PC Mackintosh who has now been promoted to chief inspector. Vengeance Most Fowl will be shown on BBC One and BBC iPlayer over Christmas in the UK and in the rest of the world on Netflix. Original The Blair Witch Project stars want fair pay. Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams stars and makers of the 1999 original have made a public statement calling for Lionsgate to grant retroactive residuals and consultation on future projects. The trio are asking for residuals “for acting services rendered in the original BWP, equivalent to the sum that would’ve been allotted through the SAG-AFTRA" deal. The original has been rebooted twice independently of the original's trio and both times they were a disappointment. A third reboot or a sequel is being contemplated and might include clips of the original. The film was originally made with Artisan Entertainment, which Lionsgate bought in December 2003. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has the worst long Memorial Day weekend box office in the US for nearly a decade! It took US$32m (£25m), second lowest to Casper debuted to US$22.5m (£17.6m) in 1995 in cash terms but in real-terms it was the lowest. Furiosa only narrowly lost to The Garfield Movie, at US$31.1m (£24.3m). Furiosa: A Mad Max Sagatells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in 2015’s Oscar-winning Mad Max: Fury Road. The film, that cost US$168m (£131m), was projected to make around US$40m (£31m) over the four-day holiday weekend in the US. Plans for the Graveyard Book have been suspended. This film adapts Neil Gaiman's novel The Graveyard Book that follows a young boy who is raised by graveyard ghosts following his family’s murder. The suspension is reportedly in part due to the recent Gaiman debacle (reported below). The film had Marc Forster slated to direct. Blade loses its director. The re-boot film already has its stars. Now director Yann Demange has left the venture and is the second director to do so: Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) exited the production in 2022 and writers have come and gone. Having said that, at the time of writing, Marvel is still sticking to an autumn 2025 release but this is likely to slip. Popeye live action film is in development. This is the first live-action revisiting of the character since the film Popeye (1980), led by Robin Williams. Directed by Robert Altman and co-starring Shelley Duvall as the sailor’s love interest Olive Oyl. The film is currently in development as a big-budget feature, and has attached screenwriter Michael Caleo. Teen Titans live action film is in development. DC Studios are producing. A director for the project has not yet been allocated. Originally introduced in The Brave and the Bold #54 in 1964, the Teen Titans are a group of young superheroes who together fight crime. They are led by Batman’s Robin, the group typically include Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy, and Cyborg. You can see the Popey (1980) trailer here. A The Little Shop of Horrors reboot is coming from the 1960 original's director, Roger Corman. This time round, Roger (The Masque of the Red Death and Death Race 2000) Corman, along with Joe Dante and Brad Krevoy, are producing. Joe Dante will be directing. He is known for offerings such as Gremlins and The Howling. The original tells the story of a florist, Seymour, who discovered a strange plant (possibly from space) with a craving for human flesh. As the plant grows, Seymour must feed it victims to keep it satisfied, leading to a series of darkly comedic and increasingly twisted events. There has already been one reboot, Frank Oz’s 1986 musical horror comedy of the same name. It starred: Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest and Bill Murray. You can see the The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) trailer here and the (1986) trailer here. Superman Legacy has been re-titled as just Superman. This is further to last season's cast news. A July 2025 release is currently slated. The Batman Part II has been delayed. It was due out late 2025 but is now slated for October 2026. Apparently, this is due to a reshuffle at Warner Brothers. This leaves 2025 open for James Gunn’s Superman. 2025 will also see a different incarnation of Batman with Superman in The Brave And The Bold. You can see the The Batman (Part I) trailer here. Venom: The Last Dance will be Venom 3. Tom Hardy reprises his role as Eddie Brock/Venom. He is also assisting with the screenplay written by Kelly Marcel who is making her feature directorial debut. Marcel and Hardy are producing. Other cast members include: Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clark Backo. The plot looks like it is part of the Spider-man multiverse arc… It is slated for an end of October release. You can see the trailer here. Mercy, the forthcoming SF thriller, gains its principal cast. The plot scripted by Marco (Arthur & Merlin) van Belle is set n a violent near-future, a detective who is accused of a violent crime is forced to prove his innocence… Annabelle (Malignant) Wallis stars opposite Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson. Timur (Night Watch Bekmambetov directs. The film is currently slated for a summer 2025 release. Silver Surfer now cast for new Fantastic Four. Julia Garner will take on the role. Ralph Ineson of the Harry Potter films and the recent The First Omen and The Creator, will play Galactus. Perdro Pascal will play the scientist Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Ebon Moss-Bachrach will portray Ben Grimm/The Thing, Vanessa Kirby will play Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, and Joseph Quinn her hot-heated brother Johnny Storm/Human Torch. The Dragon Award short-listed and Ray Bradbury winning WandaVision helmer Matt Shakman is directing. We previously reported on the rest of the principal cast. The film is expected to be in the cinemas next summer (2025). Julia Garner is currently slated to play in Blumhouse and Universal's Wolfman starring opposite Christopher Abbott. SF, comedy horror Scurry gets cast. Scurry follows two pest controllers called to a country park café to investigate a routine vermin problem, only for an avalanche of deranged squirrels come along at nightfall, attacking the staff and park visitors. The cast will include Craig Roberts and Ella (Yellowjackets) Purnell. Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi gets writers. Andor’s Beau Willimon and James (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Mangold will craft the story. Beau Willimon helped make Andor such a commercial success. Apparently, Dawn of the Jedi takes place 25,000 years beforeEpisode IV, and it’s about the discovery of the Force. Riddick: Furya sees commencement of filming. Shooting has begun in Shooting in Germany, Spain and the Great Britain. This follow-up to Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) and Riddick (2013). Vin Diesel reprises his role as the protagonist. David Twohy will once more write and direct: he previously wrote for The Fugitive and wrote and directed The Arrival. In Riddick: Furya, Riddick finally returns to his home world, a place he barely remembers and one he fears might be left in ruins. But there he finds other Furyans fighting for their existence against a new monster. And some of these Furyans are more like Riddick than he could have ever imagined. You can see the Riddick here . The Mandalorian & Grogu gets release date. It is currently slated for May, 2026. The film is helmed by Jon (Iron Man) Favreau. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow gets release date. It is currently slated for June, 2026. The was a previous Supergirl film in (1984) – trailer here. Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (working title) gets a provisional 2026 release date. The Warner Brothers offering has Peter Jackson producing and Andy Serkis directing. Apparently, this is one of a number of follow-up Lord of the Rings films being contemplated. The original trilogy of Lord of the Rings was nominated for 30 Academy Awards and won 17, including 'Best Picture' for 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping gets release date. The film is the second prequel in the series after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It will also come out as a book in March 2025 by Suzanne Collins. The film is currently slated for a November 2026 release. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes trailer is here. The Bride gets a release date. It is directed, written, and co-produced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and stars Penélope Cruz, Christian Bale, Jessie Buckley, Peter Sarsgaard and Annette Bening. The film draws inspiration from James Whale's 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, itself adapted from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. It is currently slated for a November 2026 release.  The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) trailer is here. Predator: Badlands is in the works. Dan Trachtenberg is set to direct. Trachtenberg was Emmy short-listed for Predator: Prey (2022) streamed on Hulu. Apparently the new film will be set in the future. Predator: Prey (2022) trailer is here. The Running Man re-make to star Glen Powell. Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the 1987 adaptation of the Stephen King novel. Edgar (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) Wright is to direct the new version. Scream 7 sees Neve Campbell return to the franchise. After missing Scream 6, reportedly due to pay issues, she is back for the next instalment. Kevin Williamson wrote the first (nearly 30 years ago), second and fourth Scream films, in addition to executive producing the 2022 reboot Scream and its sequel Scream 6. See the Scream 6 trailer here. Winnie the Pooh gets cinematic universe. Following the 'success' of the extremely bad Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which won five Razzie Awards and is having a sequel, Jagged Edge Productions and ITN Studios haver said that they will make a number of films in what they call 'The Twisted Childhood Universe'. There will also be a crossover film Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. The films in the 'Universe' will include: Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, Bambi: The Reckoning and Pinocchio Unstrung. Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble is said to be influenced by Freddy vs. Jason and The Avengers and it will be directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. The cast will include Scott Chambers returning as Christopher Robin, Megan Placito as Wendy Darling, Roxanne Mckee as Xana and Lewis Santer as Tigger. The film will have a teaser during the end credits of Blood and Honey 2. You can see the trailer for Blood and Honey 2 here. The Power Rangers reboot has been cancelled. Netflix has pulled out of the plan to reboot the series. The original show debuted in 1993. By 2001, the media franchise had generated over US$6 billion (£4.7bn) in toy sales. Three related cinematic films released in 1995, 1997, and 2017 and a television special released in 2023. ++++ You can see the trailer for the 2017 film here. Barbarella reboot progresses… slowly. We reported on this over a year ago and since then there has been progress but not much. It now seems that Sydney Sweeney is set to star. Reportedly, Jane Goldman and Honey Ross are in discussion to write the screenstory. And that's it for now. The Highlander reboot progresses. First up, last season's news, that Henry Cavill will star and Chad Stahelski direct, is now confirmed. The latest news is that filming is slated to start early in 2025 in Scotland, Italy and Hong Kong. Word has it that this new film has elements of a prequel as well as trying to bring in aspects of both the previous films and TV series… This franchise it seems will not die…! Spielberg's next film will be a return to UFOs! Hollywood sources say that his next project will be a UFO film but we do not know if it will be Close Encounters friendly or hostile War of the Worlds. Apparently screenwriter and horror author David Koepp is writing the screenplay so this could possibly signal more of a horror venture: Koepp was a co-writer on War of the Worlds. The Sims computer game is coming to the big screen. Sims (2000) is a life simulation computer game where players play as an avatar that has changeable personality traits, skills and relationships, and goes through the mundane tasks of daily life… It will be coming from the LuckyChap production company who have also done Saltburn, My Old Ass and Barbie. The Disneyland ride Space Mountain may become a film. Space Mountain is the space-themed indoor roller-coaster first introduced in Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort in 1975, and then followed by an installation in California’s Disneyland in 1977. However the ride has no real story. This gives a free ride (groan) to Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec who may be the film's writers. The pair's previous work includes Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The Munsters may be re-booted. The Munsters a 1960s comedy series about a household featuring a Frankenstein father, vampire granddad, vampyric mother, a werewolf son and a human belle daughter, has been considered a lighter version of the darker The Addams Family. The re-boot is by the Universal Studio Group. However, we advise you not to hold your breath. Three years ago we reported an earlier attempt at a re-boot that stalled. Maybe this new news is what came out of those earlier discussions? (We speculate wildly). There was an even earlier, six years ago attempt at a re-boot so this is a long time coming. The tentative name for this latest attempt at a reboot is 1313, after the family’s address at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. A Possession remake is being contemplated. Paramount Pictures is closing deals with, Robert Pattinson and Smile filmmaker, Parker Finn to a remake of Possession, the 1981 psychological supernatural horror. The 1981 film trailer is here. An Enemy Mine remake is being contemplated. The original 1985 film was based on a Nebula Award-winning novella by Barry B. Longyear. Terry Matalas, who scripted the final season of Picard, may be writing the film. The 1985 film trailer is here. A Spaceballs sequel is being contemplated. The Star Wars parody film is reportedly getting a sequel from Amazon MGM Studios, Josh Gad, and the original creator, Mel Brooks, of the 1987 film. The 1987 film trailer is here. Soulm8te will be a follow-up to M3gan the robot, AI, horror. Kate Dolan is to direct. It sees a bereaved man acquire an Artificially Intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate… (What could go wrong????) Soulm8te is separate from M3GAN 2.0 which is currently slated for a June 2025 release. Soulm8te is currently billed for an early 2026 release. The M3gan film trailer is here. The Conjuring: Last Rites will be the last in the (current?) run of Conjuring films. Directed by James Wan and produced by Peter Safran, The Conjuring (2013) followed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) workingk to help a family terrorised by a dark presence in their farmhouse… Globally, it took US$319 million (£250). With nine loosely connected films all told, the Conjuring franchise has so far made over US$2 billion (£1.6bn). The The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) film trailer is here. Avengelyne is being adapted by Warner Brothers. The Avengelyne comics first appeared in 1995 and concern an angel who fights the forces of evil and were co-created by Rob Liefeld who did Deadpool. Avengelyne was the most feared warrior in heaven’s Warhost, having single-handedly broken into Pandemonium, the outer fortress of hell, to confront the devil himself. She is a fallen angel, banished from heaven by God after being tricked into questioning his love for humans. Avengelyne was stripped of all her angelic abilities, other than her great strength and her blood, which, once extracted from her body, could be used as a weapon or a miracle, when it is empowered by quoting verses from the Bible. Her destiny is fated to be humanity's last hope in a coming Armageddon. Piranesi is being adapted as an animation. The novel (2020) by Susanna Clarke was short-listed for the Hugo, Nebula, Kitschies, BSFA, World Fantasy, Dragon Awards. It also won Hungary's Zsoldos Péter – 'Best Translated Novel' and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Over four million copies have been sold worldwide. The plot concerns Piranesi, whose house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house – a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known... Oregon animation studio is behind the adaptation. Influx is being adapted by Sony Pictures as Resistor. Based on the book, Influx (2014) by Daniel Suarez. It concerns physicist Jon Grady and his team who have discovered a way to reflect gravity. This will revolutionise physics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organisation known as the Bureau of Technology Control. The bureau’s mission is to suppress the truth of sudden technological progress so as to prevent the social upheaval it would trigger and in doing so they utilise the technology they seek to suppress... A Vicious Circle is being adapted. A Vicious Circle was originally a graphic novel series from Boom! Studios. The supernatural thriller will star Jack O'Connell, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller and Wunmi Mosaku. The plot's exact details are unknown but the film will likely be set in the Jim Crow-era South US and involve vampires and Southern supernatural elements. Send Help will be a horror thriller from 20th Century Studios. Set on an island it is apparently to be something of a plot hybrid between Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery and Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway. Sam (Evil Dead, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) Raimi is to direct and produce. And finally… Short video clips (short films, other vids and trailers) that might tickle your fancy…. Short SF Film: Don't forget, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is just this month (September 2024) out The sequel to Beetlejuice see Tim Burton and Oscar nominee and star Michael Keaton reunite. After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia's life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it's only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice's name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem…. You can see the trailer here. Short SF film: A Million Numbers was last year's (2023) winner of Sci-Fi London's '48 Hour Challenge. The Challenge is run by the Sci-Fi London film fest for amateur film makers to make a film in just two days: they are given a couple of lines of script and a prop to include to ensure the film is made within the time limit. A Million Numbers concerns a temporal taxi… You can see the 5-minute short here. Spoof film trailer: What if the original Star Wars film had been made in the 1950s? Now, with artificial intelligence it is possible to re-imagine the original film as a 1950s film. Want to see a trailer for such a film? Of course you do… You can see the imagined trailer here. Short docu-video: Could this have been the original Star Wars sequel? Instead of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars sequel that could have been may have been Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the novel written by Alan Dean Foster. George Lucas thought that if Star Wars did not make a huge profit then a sequel might be made for next to nothing – using all the props from the original – that by comparison would bring in the dosh. So he asked Alan Dean Foster to write a sequel novel with this in mind. Moid Moidelhoff at Media Death Cult takes a 12-minute peek at the possibility with a short interview with Alan Dean himself. It explains why Han Solo and Chewy do not appear in Splinter. The film was never made but the book did come out. What's more, a number of elements of the book later appeared in subsequent Star Wars films!!! You can see the short, mini-documentary video here. Film trailer: Nosferatu teaser trailer out. Some may feel this re-make is a waste of time but equally many are keen to see how the Robert Eggers film will turn out. The film is slated for a late December (2024) release. You can see the teaser trailer here. Film trailer: Barbarella teaser trailer out. We first reported on this remake at the start of 2021. The original Barbarella (1967) film, directed by Roger Vadim and starring Jane Fonda, was of course based on the graphic strip by Jean Claude Forest who was the art consultant for the film. This new iteration stars Sydney Sweeney is slated for release in 2025. To some, this re-make is sacrilegious: they could have made a space-opera thriller with an attractive young lady protagonist without cashing in on Barbarella's fame, but that's Hollywood for you. Anyway the teaser trailer can be seen here. Want more? See last season's video clip recommendations here. For a reminder of the top films in 2023 (and earlier years) then check out our top Science Fiction Films annual chart. This page is based on the weekly UK box office ratings over the past year up to Easter. You can use this page if you are stuck for ideas hiring a DVD for the weekend. For a forward look as to film releases of the year see our film release diary.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Television News
Computer game voice artists in the US are in dispute with computer game makers over the use of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Games voice artists of he Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) have gone on strike. Voice actors unease began at the end of last year (2023). This follows on from the 118-day actors strike that was resolved but the agreement that ended that strike did not include voice-over artists. The concern is that generative A.I. could be used to reproduce actors' voices for games without paying the actors. The US the games industry generates revenue estimated to be around US$189billion(£147bn) in 2024. Britain's actor’s union, Equity, supports the US strike. The upcoming Harry Potter TV series gets its show-runners. The series was commissioned in 2023 and its has since progress continued. The latest news is that Francesca (Succession, His Dark Materials) Gardiner will become its show-runner.&nsbp; Also announced is that Mark (Game of Thrones, The Last of Us) Mylod will direct multiple episodes. The series will be, they say, 'a faithful adaptation of the beloved ‘Harry Potter’ book series by author and executive producer J.K. Rowling'. Which was the most popular 2023/4 TV adaptation of an SFnal game: Fallout, Halo or The Last of Us? All 3 adaptations have IMDB scores higher than 7. Lets knock out the least popular which was Halo (IMDB score 7.3) which was only the most popular in three small countries . In terms of countries, it is worth noting that these never aired or there is no data for Russia Federation nations, China and some Middle East countries. Interestingly, the nuclear war related Fallout (IMDB score 8.6 and most popular in 78 countries) was most popular its launch week in the major nuclear power countries (such as the USA and India) and those nations that have been affected by nuclear war (Japan), or are likely to be affected (Eastern European nations bordering Russia, SE Europe). Fallout was also most popular in middle America (Mexico etc) and western South America and in 78 countries overall. Conversely, The Last of Us (IMDB score 8.7 and most popular in 58 countries) was popular in Canada, UK, Arabic Africa and the Middle East, and Australasia. The data comes from 140 countries and 4,500 streaming services. Twilight of the Gods reminder. This show debuts a few days after we post this news page. It is an American adult animated television series based on Norse mythology. Stingray has its 60th anniversary this autumn. This Gerry Anderson series was made in colour at the tail end of black-and-white TV broadcasting. Anderson Entertainment is celebrating Stingray‘s 60th anniversary with Stingray: Deadly Uprising a hugely ambitious multi-platform narrative which tells an new Stingray saga across novellas, audiobooks, comics, and a live full-cast performance. There has already been a concert in Birmingham. There is also The Titanican Stratagem, a novella and audiobook. Stingray comics are re-visited with Tales from the Depths” – Comic Anthology Volume 1 that combines TV Century 21 classics with five brand-new stories. A second comic compilation and a second novel are both in the works for an autumnal release. Stand-by for action…. Anything can happen in the next few months. Red Dwarf is to return. Red Dwarf is making a comeback since its last new content back in 2020, with a new three-episode special, set to air in 2025. A year ago, the dispute between creators, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor ended with new content anticipated. Additionally, co-creator Rob Grant is developing a prequel series featuring young Rimmer and Lister, in collaboration with Andrew Marshall. Farewell Young Sheldon, it was a blast. Producer Steve Holland has reportedly explained that we all knew that aged 14, he goes off to Cal Tech. It felt like the right time to end it strong while it was on top. He also revealed that if it star Iain Armitage had not been a shoe in for the show that it would not have been made: his mother sent them a video of him doing a scene… In case you missed it here is the season 7 teaser. Young Sheldon gets a spin-off series with Sheldon's brother, Georgie. The series will follow Georgie and Mandy as they raise their young family in Texas while facing the challenges of adulthood, parenting, and marriage. Montana Jordan and Emily Osment will reprise their roles from Young Sheldon. As we know from The Big Bang Theory, Georgie ultimately has two ex-wives but is the successful owner of a tyre shop franchise. The series is slated to air over the 2024/5 year. The Battlestar Galactica reboot has been cancelled. The news of the reboot was only announced at the start of the year although there had been rumblings since 2019. (Well, it was way, way, to soon…) The Lazarus Project has been cancelled… Shock, horror, drama…! We have had two seasons on Sky in the British Isles and TNT in the US with much celebration when it was renewed for a second season at the end of 2022. It was quite a neat show concerning, George (Paapa Essiedu), an everyman who stumbles on a world-changing secret that destroys his life and turns him into a killer. It transpires that the world has ended many times before. But every time it ends – thanks to nuclear war or global pandemic or sundry missile strikes – shadowy organisation Lazarus turns back time and brings everyone back to life… And here's the thing, season 2 ended with lots of loose ends. Clearly there was meant to be another season. Ho, hum You can see the season 2 trailer here. Constellation has been cancelled… after just one season! And it looks like we will never get a definitive answer as to what is going on… The series stars Noomi Rapace, as Jo Ericsson, an ISS astronaut who survives a disaster in space and returns to Earth to recover. All well and good, but she finds that parts of life are not how she originally remembers them, and some are just gone entirely! Despite some reasonable reviews, the 8-episode, Apple TV+ series never made the Nielsen’s streaming ratings Top 10, which is a sort of yard-stick for series streaming success and as such does not compare with the viewing figures for other Apple TV+ series such as Severance (which was short-listed for Bradbury with the Nebulas and Hugo Dramatic presentation – Long Form), Silo, and the Hugo short-listed For All Mankind, the latter is due for a spinoff called Star City. Apple TV+'s Invasion and Foundation, are also due to return. ++++ Meanwhile you can see the trailer for Constellation here The Boys has been cancelled. The Boys is based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick, and follows a group of vigilantes who aim to take down corrupt superheroes called “Supes” who abuse their powers. Its fifth season will be its last. The final season is currently slated to air on the late summer of 2026. You can see the season 4 teaser trailer here. Scavengers Reign has been cancelled… sort of…! The animated space opera is set on an alien planet where a damaged interstellar freighter ship gets stranded and follows the remaining crew as they struggle to locate their ship and missing crewmates while navigating a hostile world that has thrived without human interference… Max has cancelled the series, despite Variety citing it as one of the top shows of 2023. However, Netflix is now streaming 12-episode season 1 and is considering the possibility of a second season depending on how many views its first season gets. Netflix is streaming in the British Isles, N. America and New Zealand. You can see the season 1 trailer here. The Three-Body Problem has been cancelled by Netflix… sort of… or not?! The Chinese, award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem has recently had two TV adaptations (with Netflix – a US, slimmed down adaptation – and Peacock – translated Chinese original). Netflix, for its adaptation, had (in May 2024) decided not to have a complete second season but to have a new mini-season to wrap things up. At least, that is what the initial announcement suggested. The show's creators subsequently reportedly said that these extra episodes were for 'seasons', though how many was not at first clarified. So will there be just a few episodes, a full second season or a number of seasons? It now (end of May 2024) looks like there will be a total of three seasons. Originally, the Netflix adaptors had envisioned three, maybe four seasons to tell the whole story. The series debuted in March and spent three weeks in the No. 1 position on the Netflix Top 10, plus another four weeks lower on the chart. It scored a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes which, though not absolutely brilliant, is still rather good. This was adapters David Benioff and D. B. Weiss’ first new project since Game of Thrones. You can see the season 1 trailer here. Star Trek: Lower Decks has been cancelled… Shock! It had been hoped that there would be a sixth season. It has been reportedly that apparently its streaming hours figures were low but the short runtime of Lower Decks was here a factor. If so what were Paramount+ thinking? This has upset many fans. Having said that, there is a wild rumour that there may be a spin-off series…(?) You can see the season 5 trailer here. Outer Range has been cancelled by Amazon! The cancellation comes after its second season. You can see the season 2 trailer here. The Dead Boy Detectives has been cancelled by Netflix! The cancellation comes after just one season. The series spent only three weeks in Netflix’s Top 10 for English-language series, and so may be unconnected with the recent Gaiman debacle (reported below in the publishing news subsection). Star Trek: Starfleet Academy gets cast. Holly Hunter, will play the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy, and Paul Giamatti, will play the season’s main villain. Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, and George Hawkins have all been cast as cadets. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. Neuromancer gets cast. Callum Turner and Briana Middleton will star in the previously reported forthcoming series for Apple TV+ and co-produced with Skydance Television. The series is, of course, based on the William Gibson Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel. The Sandman season 2 gets additional cast. Steve Coogan will voice the opinionated canine companion of The Endless' Prodigal brother (Barry Sloane). Ruairi O'Connor will play the poet Orpheus. Clive Russell and Jack Gleeson will play Odin and the malevolent hobgoblin Puck respectively. You can see the season 1 trailer here. Daredevil: Born Again gets a release date. We originally reported on this series at the beginning of the year (2024) and later its other principal casting. we now know it is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ in March 2025. You can see the trailer here. Peacemaker has been renewed for a second season. The character was a favourite in James Gunn's film The Suicide Squad so Max made the Peacemaker series in 2022. The filming of season 2 has started and James Gunn is directing some episodes and working concurrently on the Superman film. Season 2 is currently slated for 2025 airing.  You can see the season 1 trailer here. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has been renewed for a second season. The Apple TV+ series will not only have a second season but there may be spin-off series.  You can see the season 1 trailer here. Fallout has been renewed for a second season. We previously reported on the series' premise. The Amazon Prime series has been something of a hit. Reportedly the second season has a budget of US$152 million (£122m).  You can see the season 1 trailer here. Wednesday has been renewed for a second season and there is a new academy principal. Steve (Reservoir Dogs) Buscemi will play the new principal of Nevermore Academy in Netflix's The Addams Family spin-off series that premiered at the end of 2022. The first season has reportedly garnered an astounding one billion viewing hours! This is almost certainly why Netflix is apparently considering another spin-off series focussing on Uncle Fester. Meanwhile, word has it that the second season of Wednesday will focus more on horror and less on romance…  You can see the season 2 trailer here. Wytches looks like getting a second season ahead of its first season launch! Writer Scott Snyder comic book series Wytches is becoming an Amazon Prime animated series in 2025. It is being described as extreme horror with a lot of gore. However, following early visualisation of the forthcoming season one, it looks like Amazon will be renewing it and so the makers are now working on writing season two. Avatar: The Last Airbender has been renewed for a second and also a third and final season. The show garnered 41.1 million views in just its first 11 days! In case you have not come across it, it is A live-action reimagining of the Nickelodeon animated series. It follows Aang (Gordon Cormier), a young boy who’s the titular Avatar, which means he’s the only one capable of mastering all four elements (air, water, fire, and earth). In Season 1, Aang wakes up after a 100-year slumber to discover he is the only surviving Airbender. You can see the season 1 trailer here. and season 2 trailer here. My Adventures with Superman has been renewed for a third season. The DC animated series seems to be doing well. You can see the season 2 trailer here. Interview with the Vampire has been renewed for a third season. AMC made the renewal.   You can see the season 2 trailer here. X-Men '97 looks like getting a third season ahead of its second season launch! We first reported on this series over two years ago. The latest news is that season 3 is already being written before season 2 has aired. The first season was ten episodes long.  You can see the season 1 trailer here. Upload has been renewed for a fourth and final season. Prime Video's romance comedy is set in a high tech future that is – it has to be said – looking less futuristic with every season with things like self-driving cars now firmly on the reality horizon. In this future, instead of dying, people can be “uploaded” to a virtual reality afterlife, enjoying all the comforts of a world-class resort at a top-of-the-line place such as Lakeview – provided they can afford it.  You can see the season 3 trailer here. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been renewed for fourth season. The renewal came ahead of the season 3 premiere. ; You can see the season 3 trailer here. Ghosts (US) has been renewed for fourth season. Based on the BBC (British) comedy series of the same name which concluded last year, Ghosts (US) is produced by CBS Studios in association with Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios.  You can see the season 3 trailer here. The Witcher has been renewed for a fifth and final season. The news comes ahead of season 4's airing. The series is based on the Andrzej Sapkowski novels (the premise we previously reported here). Season 4 features Liam Hemsworth as the new lead, taking over the role of Geralt of Rivia from Henry Cavill, who it is said had creative differences with the production team. Seasons 4 and 5 cover the three remaining Sapkowski 'Witcher' novels: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of Swallows and Lady of the Lake.  You can see the season 4 trailer here. For All Mankind has been renewed for a fifth season. This follows a successful season 4 that has garnered a Rotten Tomatoes perfect 100% 'Certified Fresh' score. Season four was set eight years since the events of season three. In the parallel universe it is now 2003 and humanity has reached Mars and is mining asteroids. But, harking back to season 2 US-USSR conflicts there are tensions on the international Martian base. The Apple TV+ show has come a long way since its launch ('launch', groan).  You can see the season 4 trailer here. For All Mankind new spin-off series, Star City. For All Mankind creators Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi are behind the new series and Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi will be its show-runners. The series is about the secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived. It is a thriller that takes us back to the time in this parallel universe when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the Moon. This explores the For All Mankind events from the Russian perspective. Scooby-Doo is to become a new live-action series. Warner Brothers who own Scooby-Doo are letting it go to Netflix for a new live-action TV series. Based on characters created by the Hanna-Barbera company, the series is being written by Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg. The original 1969 series was created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears for the then-Hanna-Barbera that leter went into Warner Brothers Animation. The Max original Scooby spin-off series Velma from Mindy Kaling, recently completed its second season. (Season 2 trailer here.) A live-action Scooby-Doo film was released in 2002 starring Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred, Sarah Michelle (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Linda Cardellini as Velma. It got a 2004 sequel. An animated feature, Scoob!, was released during the CoVID-19 pandemic. Tomb Raider is new live-action series will become a new computer game. Fleabag creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as we previously reported, will write and executive produce the show based on the iconic Tomb Raider computer game franchise which itself was turned into a film. And now we come full circle as a new computer game is planned. The as yet untitled game is described as “a single-player, narrative-driven action-adventure that is an all new, next chapter to Lara Croft". You can see the 2001 I>Tomb Raiderhere. Dune: Prophecy to air either at the end of the year or early 2025. The show was announced back in 2019 and last year gained its principal cast. The series is set 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides and concerns the Harkonnen Sisters who have risen to power in the Sisterhood, a secret organisation of women who will go on to become the Bene Gesserit, fabled sect that combats forces that threaten the future of humankind… The show will air on Max (the merged former HBO and Discovery+) in N. America but as Max is not in the British Isles it might possibly air on Sky (Sky Atlantic?) and NOW this side of the Pond. You can see the season 3 trailer here. Black Mirror seventh season is to air in 2025 and 'USS Callister' returns! We reported on the renewal way back at the start of the year (2024), but now there is news that 'USS Callister' will return! The original classic, season 4 opener, 'USS Callister' episode was short-listed for a Hugo back in 2018. A follow-up episode will be one of six in the seventh season on Netflix. You can see the trailer for the original 'USS Callister' episode here. It was very sci-fi, space opera (cf. Star Trek) but was very dark… The final season of Superman & Lois sees the introduction of Jimmy Olsen. The fourth and final season will introduce the 'extroverted' Daily Planet photographer. Douglas (Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters) Smith will play the character…. Previously, Mehcad Brooks played Olsen in Supergirl for six seasons. Superman & Lois airs on The CW in the US, and on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the British Isles.  You can see the season 3 trailer here. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms leads are cast. HBO's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a spin-off series from Game of Thrones. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell will take the lead roles of Dunk and Egg, respectively. Set 72 years after House of the Dragon and a century before the events of Game of Thrones, it follows two unlikely heroes who wandered Westeros, a young, naive but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends. The series is slated for a late 2025 launch. House of the Dragon gets a third season. The Game of Thrones spin-off series was renewed shortly before the season two premiere in June. The season is likely to follow the events of George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, which is a complete retelling of the events of the Targaryen civil war. Spider-Man Noir lead is cast. The Spider-Man Noir character originally appeared in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which was short-listed for the 2014 Hugo Award and was voiced by Nicholas Cage. And now Cage will star in the new live-action series and this will be his first regular television role. This will also be the first time the Noir character has been portrayed in a live-action project. Noir will tell the story “of an aging and down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero…  You can see the teaser trailer here. The forthcoming Alien TV series plot news and name. We previously reported on its cast and that it would be a prequel to the original Alien film. The latest news is that it will be set on Earth a few years before the events of Prometheus at the end of the 21st century. Reportedly it will deal with the emergence of the story’s infamous Weyland-Yutani Corporation and the race between corporations to create new android life. Wizards of Waverly Place sequel series in the works. The original series ran for four seasons on Disney Channel between 2007 and 2012. Selena Gomez starred as a teen witch, Alex Russo, living with her siblings Justin (David Henrie) and Max (Jake T. Austin) in New York City’s Greenwich Village, learning how to hone her powers while coping with everyday teenage life. The forthcoming sequel series will see Alex Russo appear in the pilot episode with Justin back as a regular character. Max Matenko is Justin’s youngest son, Milo, who is with Janice LeAnn Brown in the lead role as young, powerful witch Billie. The series sees Justin, who as an adult has chosen to lead a normal, mortal life with his family, when Justin’s sister Alex brings Billie to his home seeking help, Justin realises he must dust off his magical skills to mentor the witch-in-training while also juggling his everyday responsibilities – and safeguarding the future of the Wizard World… You can see the Disney teaser trailer here. Stephanie Meyer’s young adult novel Twilight franchise that spawned the film series is to become an animation series. You may recall that the romantic fantasy Twilight centres on high school student Bella Swan, who moves from Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington and meets a mysterious, beautiful student named Edward Cullen. By the time Bella, with the help of family friend Jacob Black, realises Edward is one of a coven of ('vegetarian') vampires, the two have fallen fatalistically in love… The first Twilight book was followed by five more. The five films came out between 2008 and 2012: the last being Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part 2) that topped the British Isles SF/F box office chart that year. Lionsgate is making the new series. That success, and the current boom on rom-fantasy novels likely propelled the idea for this series. The Talamasca from the Anne Rice vampire novels, is to be a TV series. The Talamasca, sometimes known as the Order of the Talamasca, is a fictional secret society featured in Anne Rice's 'Vampire Chronicles' and 'Lives of the Mayfair Witches' supernatural horror novel series. AMC has green-lit the series, the third in its Anne Rice 'Immortal Universe'. It is currently slated for a 2025 debut. Van Helsing to be a TV series. Apparently, Van Helsing will be a crime fighter. The series will be a contemporary take on the monster hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, who uses his uniquely inquisitive mind working alongside his ex, relentless FBI special agent Mina Harker, to solve New York City’s most harrowing cases. CBS is developing. This series is not to be confused with another series: Kit Williamson is developing a series based on Jason Henderson’s Alex Van Helsing trilogy, featuring 14-year-old descendent, with AGC Television. Golden Axe animated series coming based on the 1989 Sega game. Golden Axe was originally a side-scrolling hack-and-slash video game released by Sega for arcades in 1989. It follows veteran warriors Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead as they once again battle to save Yuria from the evil giant Death Adder who just won’t seem to stay dead. Fortunately, this time they have the inexperienced and underprepared Hampton Squib on their side. Comedy Central will air its 10-episode season. Matthew Rhys will play Gilius Thunderhead, a grumpy battle dwarf with exceptionally poor hygiene and a chip on his shoulder. Danny Pudi is Hampton Squib, a naive, inexperienced first time adventurer who has dreamt of questing his entire life. He hopes his can-do attitude can make up for his inability to actually do stuff. Lisa GGilroy portrays Tyris Flare, a fearsome battle sorceress, deadly in a fight and even deadlier with her sharp wit. Lyam McIntyre plays Ax Battler, a barbarian warrior with a strict code of honour and sweet golden retriever demeanor. His brawn Carl outweighs his brains, but his heart outweighs his brawn. Carl Tart’s Chronos 'Evil' Lait, originally from the Golden Axe III game, is a 100% badass humanoid panther. At least that’s how Chronos describes himself. In reality he’s uncomfortably cheesy and can’t read a room. A Marvel Nova TV series, or possibly films, is/are being contemplated. Nova (Richard Rider) is a Marcel character that had his own comic series (1976). With some superhuman powers (strength etc) he is a member of the intergalactic police force known as the Nova Corps. The series ended with a few unresolved issue which were tied up in a run of The Fantastic Four comics. He subsequently made sporadic returns to the Marvel comic-verse. The idea of bringing Nova to a screen have been talked about for a few years. Marvel Studios now seem to be beginning to firm up discussions and it looks like where it will be films or TV series, it will somehow tie in with events in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wonder Woman spin-off series, Trinity, is coming. Trinity is the daughter of Wonder Woman. DC writer Tom King is reportedly involved in the forthcoming series. A Heroes sequel may be coming from the original's creator Tim Kring. Its working title is Heroes: Eclipsed and is set years after the events of the original, 2006, series as new evos are being awakened and discovering powers that will change their lives. There was a 2015 mini-series Heroes Reborn. NBC are currently considering the proposal from Universal Television. You can see the original's season one trailer here. The Venus Prime series of books may become a TV series. The series of six novels (1987-1991) by Paul Preuss is based on a number of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories. An amnesic woman, Sparta, with biomechanically enhanced abilities, must uncover the truth about her past and purpose, while she escapes and evades the deadly forces trying to harness her talents to rule the Galaxy. Along the way, she solves mysteries for the Board of Space Control, an interplanetary bureaucracy. Jonathan (Star Trek: The Next Generation) Frakes is to direct the six-episode series and is also a producer. Nightbeast may be Amazon MGM Studios new fantastical horror series. A pilot has been commissioned with Tatiana ( Orphan Black, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law) Maslany to star. The series follows a young mother who is unsatisfied with her seemingly perfect suburban life, so she begins an affair with the boogeyman in her son’s closet – a surprisingly sexy man called the Nightbeast. But this harmless affair she thought to be a figment of her imagination begins to have unexpected consequences, as her two worlds increasingly begin to collide in this seductive, darkly comedic tale…
And finally, a couple of TV related vids… The Prisoner: The most influential SF show younger SF fans have (probably) never seen? How the generations have changed. Is it true that the new generation of fans have never heard of The Prisoner? Moid Moidelhoff over at Media Death Cult has a feeling that many have not as he takes a 24-minute dive into this remarkable show (one of my personal favourites). This is shot on location in Portmeirion where the series was set… You can see the 24-minute video here. Andor season two is coming in 2025. Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) journey continues as he navigates the treacherous world of the Rebellion. Set five years before the events of Rogue One and A New Hope, this season promises to delve deeper into the rise of the Rebellion against the oppressive Galactic Empire. You can see the trailer here.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Publishing & Book Trade News
US (adult) fiction book sales grow by 6%. In the US, the first six months of 2024 saw an increase of 6% in adult fiction unit sales to 95,187 copies, even though the number of overall books sold declined by 0.4% to 353,585 copies. Genre sales drove much of the increase in adult fiction sales. Adult fantasy sales grew by 85.2% over the first six months of 2023 thanks to a huge increase in interest in romantasy. Combined with increases of about 20% in SF as well as suspense/thriller books. Books by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros led the growth in fantasy. Yarros’s Iron Flame and Fourth Wing combined to sell about 1.1 million copies, while Sarah J. Maas had seven books selling in big numbers, led by her latest, A Court of Thorns and Roses. That novel sold more than 740,000 copies. Her seven current bestsellers combined sold more than three million copies. As such the situation in the US has a striking similarity with that in the British Isles. US audio book sales topped US$2 billion (£1.6bn) in the 2023/2024 year. It increased by 9% over its 2022/ 2023 figure. Reportedly, 20% of US consumers have listened to an audio book in the last year (small>2023). US e-book sales have topped US$956 million (£750m). Amazon controls nearly 50% of the US e-book market. US bookstore sales continued to fall in 2023. US bookshop sales dropped by more than US$2 billion (£1.57 million) in 2023. Although the number of US bookshops increased by nearly 400 in 2020, that year also saw 60 small bookshop closures. British Isles audio book downloads have increased. British Isles audio book downloads increased 17% last year.
Sales of audiobooks have seen continuous growth for over a decade.
++++ Recent related publishing economy items elsewhere on this site include: Britain has fewer regular readers survey reveals! …Half (50%) of UK adults don’t regularly read and almost one in four (24%) young people (16-24) say they’ve never been readers, according to research commissioned by The Reading Agency. Over 2,000 were surveyed and this survey builds on a previous one in 2015. The proportion of regular readers are down from 58% in 2015 to the aforesaid just 50% today. 15% of UK adults have never read regularly for pleasure, an 88% increase since 2015. Juveniles (16-24) face the most barriers to reading, with 24% saying they’ve never been regular readers. It would seem that there are several new barriers to reading, with lack of time (33%) reported and the distraction of social media (20%) cited as the primary obstacles for many… This dismal picture contrasts with the strength of UK publishing which perhaps might be reconciled if the more older and wealthier generations are buying more books. Over 180 council-run libraries in Britain have been transferred to community groups or have closed since 2016. Some 2,000 jobs have been lost. More deprived communities were four times more likely to have lost a publicly-funded library in that time. The poorest areas were around four times more likely to permanently lose a local library than the richest. One in 20 libraries have been affected. A third of the remaining local council run libraries have reduced their opening hours since 2016. The Internet Archive loses its court case against US publishers and takes down books. We first reported on publisher concerns that the Internet Archive was undermining e-book sales back in 2022. Despite some support from authors the Internet Archive lost an initial judgement and then record companies brought a second case. And now, due to the Court's ruling, the Internet Archive has been forced to remove 500,000 books. The Internet Archive appealed but in September U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court decision that the Internet Archive’s “Free Digital Library”violates the suing publishers’ copyrights. Boom! Studios in the USA is taken over by the Random House Publishing Group. Boom! Studios is known for producing comics such as such as Keanu Reeves’ BRZRKR and publishing graphic novelisations of franchises such as Power Rangers, Dune, Garfield and Dark Crystal. It was founded in 2005 by Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby. Disney has sold its minority stake in Boom! Studios that 20th Century Fox acquired in 2017. The Random House Publishing Group in the US is a division of the global Penguin Random House group. John Scalzi has had a new 10-book deal extension with Tor. He still has six books to go on his current 13-book deal and this 10-book extension comes on top of that and is currently expected to start in 2029. ++++ Related news previously covered – Alastair Reynolds' £1 million (US$1,620,000), ten-book contract with Gollancz. A lost Terry Pratchett short story has been discovered. The Terry Pratchett story, 'Arnold, the Bominable Snowman'. It will be added to the stories in A Stroke of the Pen. ++++ Reviewed elsewhere on this site is Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes. Lost Crichton novel, just published, may be adapted for the cinema by Steven Spielberg! Sheri Crichton, Michael Crichton's widow, had discovered the author's partially completed draft novel. She and Crichton's publisher called on thriller writer James Patterson to finish it off. Called Eruption it is a dual story of a Hawaiian volcanic eruption and a secret military base. Apparently Patterson, who is really a thriller writer, had to hire a researcher to help him with the science in the story. Red Sonja is returning in a new novel. The publisher Orbit says: Red Sonja was originally a character from the Conan The Barbarian comics (and movies). She is the fiercest of all she-warriors, any of you who loved Xena: Warrior Princess will adore Red Sonja. Red Sonja was given loads of makeovers and treatments over the years but when Gail Simone started writing Red Sonja comics for Dynamite in 2013, everything changed. Sonja always had something about her that drew people to her character, but with Gail writing her it was like she had new life breathed into her. She was much more daring, more fascinating and warmer (and more bloodthirsty) than ever before. It was such a joy reading those comics when they were published. The Expanse's James S. A. Corey launch ' The Captive’s War' trilogy of novels Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, alias James S. A. Corey, have begun a new trilogy of novels with The Mercy of Gods. The Carryx - part empire, part hive - has waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy in its conflict with an ancient and deathless enemy. When they descend on the isolated world of Anjiin, the human population is abased, slaughtered and put in chains. The best and brightest are abducted, taken to the Carryx world-palace to join prisoners from a thousand other species. Dafyd Alkhor, assistant to a prestigious scientist, is captured along with his team. Even he doesn't suspect that his peculiar insight and skills will be the key to seeing past their captors ' terrifying agenda. Swept up in a conflict beyond his control and vaster than his imagination, Dafyd is poised to become humanity's champion - and its betrayer… The Mercy of Gods is out published by Orbit. The Wasp Factor by Iain Banks gets 40th anniversary reprint. OK, so this is mundane fiction and not SF, but it is from the wonderful Iain Banks. The reprint comes from Abacus Books (part of the Little Brown Publishing Group) and comes with an introduction by Neil Gaiman (which in the light of recent events the publishers might well regret)… Gosh, we miss Iain; lost him way too soon. Voted as one of the top 100 books of the 20th century, The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, darkly comic novel, and one of the most infamous of contemporary literature. Classic genre books fetch big byms, many Galactic groats, at auction! A first edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818) and first edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) were up for auction in the US at Heritage Auctions. Frankenstein went for US$843,000 (£669,000) and The Hobbit fetched US$300,000 (£238,000). Three have accused Neil Gaiman of behaving inappropriately it is reported. The accusations include exposing himself, unwanted phone seΧ, groping and assault. The separate events allegedly took place over a number of years. The news was reported in The Bookseller among other publications. Neil Gaiman reportedly ‘strongly denies’ the allegations, saying that he believed consent had been established. Since then, others have come forward with further allegations.
And finally, some of the summer's book-related videos… The Finest Supernatural Tale In English Literature? Moid Moidelhoff, over at the >Media Death Cult Youtube Channel, invites us to consider Algernon Blackwood's 1907 novelette, 'The Willows', as a contender for the grand chief fountain-head of the insidious order. It did though inspire the likes of H. P. Lovecraft. You don’t have to buy in to the pronunciation of Danube as 'dan-noob' but it is the Moidelhoff way… You can see the 9-minute video here. The History of Science Fiction in 20 minutes… Moid Moidelhoff, over at the >Media Death Cult Youtube Channel, looks at a brief history of science fiction. From the ancient Greeks to the present day. You can see the 23-minute video here. Heinlein's novel Tunnel in the Sky reviewed as part of Rocket Summer. Rocket Summer took place over the… er… summer on a number of thematically-related YouTube Channels that looked at Golden age SF. This time Grammaticus Books looked at the Robert Heinlein novel Tunnel in the Sky (1955). Arguably, this not his best book – it is a young adult coming of age story – but then the standard Heinlein sets is high. The story does though reveal some of the themes that recur in a number of his works including societal structure. It concerns a group of teenagers accidentally stranded when teleported to an uninhabited world as part of colonisation initial training. This novel has a bit of a Lord of the Flies feel: that novel came out the previous year. Grammaticus does pick up on something Heinlein does not openly convey but does hint at in a few places, is that the main protagonist is from an ethnic minority: remember, this novel was published in 1955 USA. You can see the 9-minute video here. Who was Philip K. Dick? Moid Moidelhoff, over at Media Death Cult two years ago embarked on a project to read all of Philip K. Dick's novels. He is now about halfway through that venture and so has taken time out to screen a 21-minute video on the man himself. Thrill to the 'K' in Philip K. Dick. Wow, to his relationships. Tremble at the threat of nuclear war (don' cha jus' luv the end of the world? Dick does.)… And discover why some of the author's themes were almost inevitable and that we should praise the Lord for failure and drugs… You can see the 21-minute video here. An early 20th century classic re-visited. Some stories get lost in time. As part of Rocket SummerGrammaticus Books takes a look at a 1924 classic. An in depth review of A. Merritt's high fantasy novel, 'The Ship of Ishtar'. Originally published in serialize form in 1924. And an influence for future fantasy authors such as Michael Moorcock. nbsp; You can see the 11-minute video here. The novel Solaris is reviewed dramatically! Moid Moidelhoff, over at the Media Death Cult Youtube Channel, looks at Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris in a short video but with a certain drama…! You can see the 12-minute video here.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Forthcoming SF Books
Fortress Sol by Stephen Baxter, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61462-7. World Walkers by Neal Asher, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03798-8. The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August, Del Rey, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-152-9-93489-2. Minecraft: The Village by Max Brooks, Penguin, £7.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94713-5. Deep Black by Miles Cameron, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61504-4. Doctor Who: Ruby Red (2024) Georgia Cook, BBC Books, £14.99 / Can$31.99 / US$20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-785-94899-2. Bellevue by Robin Cook, Macmillan, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05097-0. Mercy of the Gods by James S. A. Corey, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51779-7. Eruption by Michael Crichton & James Patterson, Century, £22 / US$32, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90749-0. Extremophile by Ian Green, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-54584-3. Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton, Tor, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-07370-6. On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52008-7-7. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-03-590957-5. The Three-Body Problem manga box set by Cixin Liu, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £100, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-91242-1. Doctor Who: Caged (2024) Una McCormack, BBC Books, £16.99 / Can$35.99 / US$22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-785-94918-0. The Wilding by Ian McDonald, Gollancz, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61147-3. Basilisk by Graham Masterton, Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90966-7. Petrified by Graham Masterton, Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-837-93198-9. Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini, Tor, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00113-2. Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-91303-9. Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-20332-7. Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61768-0. Starter Villain by John Scalzi, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-509-83541-6. The Last Man by Mary Shelly, Penguin Classics, £12.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-143-13790-0. A welcome reprint and a first outing for Penguin Classics for this landmark SF and climate fiction novel. Vigilance by Allen Stroud, Flame Tree Press, £9.95 /Can$12.95 / US$14.95, pbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58939-1. Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01376-0. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04566-2. Nomad Land by Francesco Verso, Flame Tree Press, £12.95 /Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58926-1. Solarpunk edited by Francesco Verso, Flame Tree Press, £16.99 / Can$34.99 / US$26.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-17935-2. Spiral by Cameron Ward, Michael Joseph, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-405-95819-6. Revenant-X by David Wellington, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52143-5. Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-62416-9. The First Murder on Mars by Sam Wilson, Orion, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-40-919918-2.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Forthcoming Fantasy Books
The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch, Orion, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22440-7. Arabian Folk and Fairy Tales edited by anonymous, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 /Can$19.99 / US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-17805-8. Chinese Myths and Legends edited by anonymous, Flame Tree Press, £10.99 /Can$19.99 / US$14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-17806-5. Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-02738-5. Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90863-9. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00737-0. The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52192-3. October by Gregory Bastianelli, Flame Tree Press, £12.95 /Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58926-1. Januaries by Olivie Blake, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03957-9. Masters of Death by Olivie Blake, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01154-4. Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brenan, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52249-4. The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04096-4. Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent, Bramble, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05176-2. The Songbird and the Heart of Stone by Carissa Broadbent, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05071-0. The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04095-7. Breaking Hel by Miles Cameron, Gollancz, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23257-0. The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52525-9. What if… Marc Spector was Host to Venom? by Mike Chen, Del Rey hrdbk, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91425-2. Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-00140-2. Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01566-5. Elusive by Genevieve Cogman, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08377-4. The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury, £9.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-67521-7. Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell, Quercus, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43702-7. Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell, Quercus, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-787-47145-0. The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01821-5. A Curse of Crows by Lauren Dedroog, Gollancz, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61612-6. Tales of a Monsterous Heart by Jennifer Delaney, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61598-3. Once a Monster: A reimagining of the legend of the Minotaur by Robert Dinsdale, Pan, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09739-9. Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy, Orbit, £19.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52398-9. Ice by Jacek Dukaj, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-786-69728-8. The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04232-6. Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan, Hodderscape, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-72873-7 Mistress Of Lies by K. M. Enright, Orbit, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52470-2. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi, Del Rey, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-929591. Discontinue if Death Ensues: Tales from the tipping point edited by Carol Gyzander & Anna Taborska, Flame Tree Press, £16.99 /Can$34.99 / US$26.96, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-17937-6. Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon, Vintage, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-784-74555-4. Confounding Oaths by Alexis Hall, Gollancz, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60895-4. The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60475-8. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-06114-7. A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire by Sarah Hawley, Gollancz, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60895-4. A Reign of Rose: The Sacred Stones Book 3 by Markus Heitz, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43410-1. The Return of the Dwarves Book 2 by Markus Heitz, Arcadia, £12.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42489-8. The Legacy of Arniston House by T. L. Huchu, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09777-1. Bittershore by V. V. James, Gollancz, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22576-3. Goldfinch by Raven Kennedy, Michael Joseph, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-24169581-4. Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52506-8. Brothersong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00225-2. Heartsong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00223-8. Ravensong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00219-1. Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T. J. Klune, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00937-4. The Land of the Living and the Dead by Shauna Lawless, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-803-28272-5. The Scarlet Throne by Amy Leow, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52349-1. A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05039-0. The Wren in the Holly Library by K. A. Linde, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04485-6. Seaborn by Michael Livingston, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90575-1. The Silverblood Promise by James Logan, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43278-7. The Half King by Melissa Landers, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50666-5. My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine, Century, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94542-1. Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M. Lin, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01126-1. The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04857-1. Whispers Most Foul by Emma MacDonald, Michael Joseph, hrdbk, £16.99, ISBN 978-0241-71524-6. The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61656-0. A Rose By Any Other Name by Mary McMyne, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51772-8. Between Dragons And Their Wrath by David Madson, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51824-4. Goblin by Josh Malerman, Orion, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-398-71156-3. A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08100-8. Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03928-9. Bringer of Dust by J. M. Miro, Bloomsbury, £20 hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-65108-2. The Great When by Alan Moore, Bloomsbury, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-64322-3. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jo Fletcher Books, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41801-9. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42709-7. The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43100-1. Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jo Fletcher Books, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41806-4. Elemental Forces edited by Mark Morris, Flame Tree Press, £9.95 / Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58866-0. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, Vintage, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-30447-5. Buried Deep by Naomi Novik, Del Rey, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91621-8. Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, Virago, £19.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-349-01615-3. The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52032-2. The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05401-5. The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen, Orbit, 9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52218-0. The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch, Del Rey, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-95152-1. Blood on the Tide by Katee Robert, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94747-0. Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09970-6. What If… Loki Was Worthy? by Madeleine Roux, Penguin, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94658-9. A Tide of Black Steel by Anthony Ryan, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52280-7. This Cursed House by Del Sandeen, Michael Joseph, hrdbk, £18.99, ISBN 978-0-241-71451-5. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43631-0. Stay in the Light by A.M. Shine, Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-54793-9. Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52060-5. Primal Mirror by Nalini Singh, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60461-1. The Gods Below by Andrea Stuart, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52067-4. Endless Terrors by K. J. Sutton, Penguin, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94487-5. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennett, Witch by Melinda Taub, Jo Fletcher Books, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42624-3. Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-03590152-4. Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03099-6. A Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03109-2. Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-15943-1. A Dawn of Gods and Fury by K. A. Tucker, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-95113-2. Fallen Gods by Rachel Van Dyken, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05074-1. The Doors of Midnight by R.R. Virdi, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23404-8. Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang, Del Rey, hrdbk, £16.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-93551-6. We Shall Be Monsters by Alyssa Wees, Del Rey hrdbk, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90098-9. Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White, Del Rey, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91768-0. Cross Bones by Tracy Whitwell, Pan, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08758-1. All the Devils by Catelyn Wilson, Michael Joseph, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-241-68394-1. Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43137-7. Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood, Macmillan, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04545-7. The Coven by Harper L. Woods, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50625-2. The Cursed by Harper L. Woods, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50627-6. The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43365-4.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Forthcoming Non-Fiction SF &
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 General Science News
The shortlist fo the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize has been released. Shortlisted were: Continued progress in long march to fusion power. Abundant, clean energy is something of an SF trope powering civilisations of the future and a post-scarcity society... This summer Nature saw a rather dry paper but one that is still of importance as progress continues to be made in the long march to develop fusion power. A group of largely US-based researchers have created Tokamak plasmas with an experimental rig – the DIII-D National Fusion Facility – with a line-averaged density approximately 20% above the Greenwald density (a metric for commercial fusion) and an energy confinement quality of approximately 50% better than the standard high-confinement mode. Human made fusion power works by confining a plasma, creating such high plasma densities that atoms fuse to release energy with the creation of helium. The confinement is done through a magnetic bottle. The very simplest confinement would be a tube with electric coils creating a magnetic field. However, such a simple arrangement would see the plasma leak out of each of the tube's ends. To get around this you can turn the linear tube into a circular tube joining the former tube's ends together, which gets rid of end-of-tube leakage as there are now no ends from which leakage can take place. Such a circular ring, or donut-shaped ring, is the basis of the Tokamak design, which is what the researchers used. Fusion power is oft ridiculed because it has long been predicted to be available to us in a few decades time but never seems to happen: tomorrow never comes. This is a little unfair as in the last decades of the 20th century a road map to commercial fusion was created and funding pledges made by various nations. However, successive governments from various nations were repeatedly slow to provide this funding. Further, there were bureaucratic, administrative hurdles. You may recall around the turn of the millennium, that while the land in France for the US$22-billion ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) – scheduled to be operational next year – had been slated, the current landowners refused surveyor access!). This reactor will be the world's largest Tokamak: it will weigh 23,000 tonnes and is designed to generate 10 times the power that it consumes. We are getting there, albeit slower than we all had hoped. Meanwhile, this is another milestone. OK, so we are not there yet. The researchers themselves point out that their experimental rig does not take into account the metal walls to carry away the heat used for electricity generation. Nor can it deal with the helium waste. But it is still a significant progress that should help ITER operation. The researchers themselves say: "The operating regime we report supports some critical requirements in many fusion reactor designs all over the world and opens a potential avenue to an operating point for producing economically attractive fusion energy." Their paper itself concludes with: "The experimental achievement and the increased understanding reported in this paper may open a potential avenue to an operating point for producing economically attractive fusion energy." Though no-one seems to have picked up on this paper, Nature have made it open access (most research papers in Nature as not open access. (See Ding, s. et al (2024) A high-density and high-confinement Tokamak plasma regime for fusion energy. Nature, vol. 629, p555-560.) We have less than a decade's worth of carbon emissions left if we are to keep warming below 1.5°C above the IPCC's pre-industrial temperature, says the Climate Change Initiative report for 2023! Now, ignoring the previous item below (which suggest that the IPCC's definition of 'pre-industrial temperature' was too high and we have already passed 1.5°C pre-industrial) and sticking with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) estimates (it is after all the science rule-book by which politicians are meant to go by) it looks like we have less than a decade's worth of carbon emissions to go at the current rate of emissions before we exceed 1.5°C warming. It concludes that we have just a few years left of emitting greenhouse gases at the rate we currently do (see graph left) before enough are in the atmosphere to take warming over 1.5°C above the IPCC's pre-industrial temperature and that we will do this before 2034. (See Foster, P. M., Smith, C., Walsh, T., et al (2024) Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: Annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. Earth System Science Data, vol. 16, p2,625–2,658.) Over 1.8 billion (nearly 15% of the world's population) do not have meaningful access to electricity. Researchers used satellite images taken on cloudless nights and compared the light emitted with population distribution maps. This total is far higher than the official number of people lacking electricity access. (See Min, B. et al (2024) Lost in the dark: A survey of energy poverty from space. Joule, vol. 8, p1-7.) Tau neutrinos detected in Antarctic 'observatory'. An observatory at the South Pole has made the first solid detection of a type of elementary particle called the tau neutrino that came from outer space. Neutrinos of all three known ‘flavours’ are notoriously elusive, but among them, the tau neutrino is the most elusive yet: it was first directly detected in the laboratory only in 2000. At the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, detectors embedded throughout a cubic kilometre of the Antarctic ice sheet pick up flashes of light that signal the possible presence of a neutrino. When a tau neutrino hits the ice, it produces a particle called a tau lepton, which travels only a short way before decaying. The resulting signal is similar to that produced by an electron neutrino, whereas muon neutrinos produce muons, which leave long traces in the ice. The IceCube Collaboration looked at IceCube data from 2011 to 2020, and used machine learning to distinguish between the signals of tau, electron and muon neutrinos. The collaborators found seven interactions that had a high probability of being produced by high-energy tau neutrinos. (See Abbasi, R. et al (2024) Observation of Seven Astrophysical Tau Neutrino Candidates with IceCube. Physical. Reviews Letters. vol. 132, 151001 and also a mini-summary in Nature.) Russian investment in science is to decline by 25% while Ukraine war spend increases. The decline will take place over the next two years. Funding for applied research, which receives roughly two-thirds of Russia’s federal research spending, will be hit the hardest, dropping from 458 billion rubles (£3.86 billion, US$4.9 bn) this year to 362 billion in 2025 and 260 billion in 2026. Basic (fundamental or non-applied) research will remain roughly constant. Russia's spend on research amounts to 2.7% of its tax revenue and this will fall to an estimated 2% in 2026. Currently Russia is spending 40% of its tax revenue on its war with Ukraine. These research cuts seemingly contrasts with Russia president Vladimir Putin promise, prior to the March 2024 elections, to put Russia among “the top 10 of global leaders by the volume of scientific research and development over six years” and to increase research spending to 2% of gross domestic product, up from 0.4% of GDP in 2023. (See Gerden, E. (2024) Russia sets 25% cut to research. Science, vol. 385, p1,035.)
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Natural Science News
When did flowering plants (angiosperms) rise? A large, international team lead by researchers based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Great Britain, has looked at the genes of nearly 8,000 (about 60%) angiosperm species. By comparing their differences and similarities, they can estimate when each arose. They conclude that the first rapid diversification of angiosperms took place around 140 million years ago and they likely first evolved 154 million years ago towards the end of the Jurassic. (Zuntini, A. R. et al (2024) Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms. Nature, vol. 629, p843-850.)< The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs came from beyond Jupiter. The object that wiped out almost all dinosaurs 66 million years ago was an asteroid that originally formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter, according to geochemical evidence from the impact site in Chicxulub, Mexico. This idea is not new but now there is corroborating evidence. Researchers have found ruthenium metal in concentrations equal to those in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that usually come from beyond Jupiter early in the Solar System's history but which subsequently migrated closer to the Sun. (See Fischer-Godde, M. et al (2024) Ruthenium isotopes show the Chicxulub impactor was a carbonaceous impactor -type asteroid type. Science, vol. 385, p752-756.) Modern humans had relations with Neanderthals, but did Neanderthals have relations with modern humans: what was the modern-human-to-Neanderthal gene flow? We all know that Neanderthals and modern humans had relations and that modern human genomes outside of Africa have about 2% Neanderthal DNA, but what was modern humans impact on Neanderthal DNA? By looking at Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of 2,000 modern humans, a small team of US-based molecular biologists have back-calculated that Neanderthals acquired 2.5 to 3.7% of their genome from modern humans. (See Li, L. et al (2024) Recurrent gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans over the past 200,000 years. Science, vol. 385, eadi1768.) Homo floresiensis, nicknamed Hobbit man, was shorter. Our knowledge of Homo floresiensis has slowly increased since they were first discovered. They lived up to around 12,000 years ago and were just 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall but new discoveries mean that they could have been only a metre tall. Hominins lived on the Indonesian island of Flores over 700,000, or possibly a million, years ago and then evolved smaller. The new discovery itself dates from somewhere around 700,000 years ago. (See Kaifu, Y. et al (2024) Early evolution of small body size in Homo floresiensis. Nature Communications, vol. 15, 6381.) Plague hit Europe in the Neolithic. A collaboration of predominantly European based researchers has looked at genomes of Scandanavians (Danish and southern Swedish) who once live between 5,300 and 4,900 years before the present. During this time there was a marked reduction in the number of human remains suggesting a population decline. This period coincides with the cessation of megalith (stone structure) building in the area. They found the genomes of a Yersinia species, a bacteria one species of which causes the Black Death or plague. They found that the Neolithic plague was widespread, detected in at least 17% of the sampled population and across large geographical distances. They demonstrated that the disease spread within the Neolithic community in three distinct infection events within a period of around 120 years. They believe that plague could have been a contributing factor to the Neolithic decline and it could be that this population decline facilitated the arrival of Bronze Age immigrants. The genomics also revealed the social structure was organised along male kinship lines, and females generally came from other kin groups. Because plague was infecting a significant proportion of the population, excess mortality associated with the disease could have undermined the long-term viability of society, leading to the eventual collapse of this form of Neolithic society. (See Seersholm, F. V. et al (2024) Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic FarmersNature, vol. 632, p114-121.) Rice cultivation has taken place for far longer that we previously thought: 24,000 years ago. Previously it had been thought that rice domestication took place 9,000 years ago. New work looks at rice remains from two archaeological sites in China – Shangshan and Hehuashan – near the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The new genetic evidence now points to the growth of wild rice at least 100,000 years before present, its initial exploitation as a gathered resource at about 24,000 years before present, its pre-domestication cultivation at about 13,000 years before present, and eventually its domestication at about 11,000 years before present. (See Zhang, J. et al (2024) Rice’s trajectory from wild to domesticated in East Asia. Science, vol. 384, p901-906. DOI: 10.1126/science.ade448.) Cauliflower domestication origins elucidated. Brussel Sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower are all one species: three different varieties of Brassica oleracea. It is an important crop. In 2020, US alone farmers grew more than 370,000 tonnes and globally over 25.5 million tons with a net value of £11.4 billion ( US$14.1 bn) in 2020. But how did cauliflower (Brassica oleracea variety botrytis) evolve? A score or so of largely China-based researchers have undertaken a genetic analysis. They analysed 971 genomes from cauliflower and related plants. The researchers found three genes that were probably important for cauliflower’s evolution from broccoli, particularly in the formation of the tight whorls, called curds, on cauliflower heads. Both cauliflower and broccoli are speculated to have been domesticated about 2,500 years ago. Their results also confirm that the Aegean-endemic B. cretica is the closest wild ancestor of B. oleracea. (See Chen, R. et al (2024) Genomic analyses reveal the stepwise domestication and genetic mechanism of curd biogenesis in cauliflower. Nature Genetics, pre-print.) Increased Antarctic ultraviolet due to a larger ozone hole is affecting species. Although the ozone layer is expected to recover before the end of the 21st century, a hole over Antarctica continues to appear each year. The ozone hole used to close before the onset of Antarctic summer, meaning that most biota were not exposed to severe springtime UV-B light. However, in recent years, ozone depletion has persisted into December, which marks the beginning of southern hemisphere summer. The past 4 years have been characterised by increased ozone depletion summer – in part due to the Australian 2019/2020 bushfires. Research now shows that species such as krill ((Euphausia superba) are moving into deeper water to escape the increased UV and reduced snow cover threaten plants to UV damage and this can impact animal species. (See Robinson, S. A. et al (2024) Extended ozone depletion and reduced snow and ice cover – Consequences for Antarctic biota. Global Change Biology, vol. 30, e17283.) Heat wave deaths over 20 years top 100,000. An international team, led primarily by Australian-based researchers have analysed heat wave deaths between 1990-2019. 153,078 deaths were associated with heatwaves (nearly half in Asia), which equates to 236 deaths per 10 million residents. The good news is that global heatwave-related excess death rate declined by 7.2% per decade in comparison to the 30-year average which suggest that we are adapting to climate change for now. Previous studies suggest that N. India, Pakistan and E. Asia will be where future increased deaths may occur without universal air conditioning as global warming continues. (See Zhao, Q. et al (2024) Global, regional, and national burden of heatwave-related mortality from 1990 to 2019: A three-stage modelling study. PLOS Medicine, vol. 2 (5), e1004364.) African tropical forests are burning more due to human activities such as logging and climate change. Fires were historically rare in tropical forests of West and Central Africa, where dense vegetation, rapid decomposition, and high moisture limit available fuels. Using satellite data US based researchers have looked at tropical forest fires between 2003 to 2021. Trends were mostly positive, particularly in the north-eastern and southern Congo Basin, and were concentrated in areas with high deforestation. Year-to-year variation of fires was synchronised with increasing temperature and vapour pressure deficit. Increasing fire is a concern because it can release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, reduce the amount of carbon stored in the African tropics, degrade habitats for species that live in tropical forests, and decrease the amounts of wood, food, medicine and other resources that forests provide for humans. Their results contrast with the drier African woodlands and savannas, where fires have been steadily decreasing. (See Wimberly, M. C. et al (2024) Increasing fire activity in African tropical forests is associated with deforestation and climate change. Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 51, e2023GL106240.) The global forest carbon sink is more or less steady but tropical deforestation and further intensification of forest disturbance ecology and geographer researchers warn! They calculated the amount of different types of forest – tropical, temperate boreal (sub-polar) forests as well as intact (near natural/pristine)and re-growth forests. They found that the carbon sink in forests globally was steady, at 3.6 Pg C/yr (petagrams of carbon per year) in the 1990s and 2000s, and 3.5 Pg C/yr in the 2010s (a petagram being 1015 grams or 1012 kilograms or alternatively a billion tonnes). Biological conservation works a global meta-analysis of 186 studies (including 665 trials) reveals. More and more species are threatened with extinction. Targets in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2010–2020 through the Convention on Biological Diversity and now 4 goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030 in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are unlikely to be met: indeed, none of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2010–2020 were met! This begs the question as to how effective are the biological conservation measures we have taken? At least 90 amphibian species are being driven to extinction by a seemingly unstoppable fungal disease chytridiomycosis: up to now! A team of Australian bioscientists have devised hot holes in bricks for frogs. This heats the frogs up to over 30°C, a temperature at which the fungus cannot survive. They also found that the cured frogs are subsequently resistant to chytridiomycosis even under cool conditions that are optimal for fungal growth. ( Waddle, A. W. et al (2024) Hotspot shelters stimulate frog resistance to chytridiomycosis Nature, vol. 631, p344-349.) Rivers in British National Parks show high levels of active pharmaceuticals. England's 10 national parks are renowned for their landscapes, wildlife, and recreational value. However, surface waters in the national parks may be vulnerable to pollution from human-use chemicals, such as active pharmaceutical ingredients which include metabolites from the contraceptive pill. Locations in the Peak District and Exmoor had higher concentrations than most city rivers. Fourteen locations had concentrations of active pharmaceutical ingredients above levels of concern for fish, invertebrates, and algae or for selection for antimicrobial resistance. Myopia (short-sightedness) is booming globally! What is the cause and can it be stopped? Globally, myopia has nearly doubled over the past two decades-plus to affect getting on for three billion people (over 30% of the global population). Some think that half the world's population, 5 billion, may be affected by 2050. A few think that this boom could become even worse than this estimate. What is causing this? Here, scientists think that it is our increasing use of computer screens and now smartphone screens. There are some pharmaceutical options being considered as are other therapies including light therapy which is thought to stimulate blood supply. But here there is even debate about which colour light to use and even long-term safety concerns. So the message for now is more outdoor time and to lower screen use. You'll see it makes sense. (See Dolgin, E. (2024) Myopia Is Booming. What Can Prevent It? Nature, vol. 629, p989-991.) The way magic mushrooms (psilocybin) works is beginning to be elucidated and this may eventually lead to a reasonably long-lasting treatment for depression. Researchers in the US have used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) of the brains of those given a dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. They found that psilocybin disrupts, desynchronizes brain connectivity and sort of re-sets it. This precision drug mechanism study was conducted in non-depressed volunteers. Verification of the proposed antidepressant mechanism of psilocybin will require precision, depression patient studies but it may be that for some of those suffering depression, taking psilocybin only once a month might be an effective treatment. More research is required. (See Siegel, J. S. et al (2024) Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain. Nature, vol. 632, p131-138.) Avian flu virus expunged from US milk, but still in US cows. US milk now seems to be free of the H5N1 Avian flu but it is spreading in US cows with early this year (2024) the virus found 36 herds in 9 states, but no living virus has been detected in pasteurised milk. It has been spreading to other farm animals though steps to curb this having been taken include, recently, the creation of genetically modified H5N9-resistant chickens. Infected cows do not die, but they do incubate the virus so facilitating the rise of new H5N1 variants. So far human infection seems to be limited; having said that, there has not been much testing of farm workers. (See Reardon, S. (2024) Bird flu in US cows. Where will it end? Nature, vol. 629, p515-6.)
…And finally this section, the season's SARS-CoV-2 / CoVID-19 science primary research and news roundup. It is difficult to infect roughly half reasonably healthy people with CoVID-19 it transpires. Now, surprisingly, this is bad news! Researchers wanted to deliberately infect low-risk-of-fatality subjects so as to test vaccine candidates. However, he found that half of those he wanted to infect were difficult to do so. Even with a very high dose some only temporarily got infected. So researchers are now exploring the possibility of screening potential participants to identify those with low levels of immune protection. (Callaway, E. (2024) Scientists Tried To Give People CoVID – And Failed. Nature, vol. 629, p269-270.) Chinese virologist who was the first to share CoVID-19 genome sleeps on street after lab shuts, Nature reports. The first person to publicly release the genome sequence of the virus that causes CoVID-19 – virologist Zhang Yongzhen – has been in a public dispute with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center (SPHCC), Fudan University, China. According to social-media posts on Zhang’s personal Weibo account, the institute gave the research team two days to leave, but the SPHCC did not initially specify to where they should relocate. Later, Zhang said that officials told his team to move to a lab that did not have the necessary biosafety conditions to store its samples, which contain unknown pathogens. Zhang’s lab is a biosafety level-3 laboratory. Which begs the question as to whether China's leaders have learned nothing from the pandemic. (You can see the article here.) The first part of the UK report into how the nation responded to the 2020 CoVID-19 pandemic has been released. The 2020 pandemic globally (and officially though the true figure is most likely far higher) caused 22 million deaths and in the UK 225,668 deaths. For the UK, this was comparable to the 1919 Spanish flu outbreak. The report states that, ultimately, the UK was spared worse by the individual efforts and dedication of health and social care workers and the civil and public servants who battled the pandemic; by the scientists, medics and commercial companies who researched valiantly to produce lifesaving treatments and ultimately vaccines; by the local authority workers and volunteers who looked after and delivered food and medicine to elderly and vulnerable people, and who vaccinated the population; and by the emergency services, transport workers, teachers, food and medicinal industry workers and other key workers who kept the country going. WHO most dangerous pathogens list expanded. The UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) has revised and expanded its list of pathogens that could next spark a pandemic: it is now over 30 long. It now includes influenza A virus, dengue virus and monkeypox virus. It also includes half a dozen influenza A viruses including subtype H5 including H5NI that causes bird flu. Among the five bacteria newly added are strains that cause cholera, plague, dysentery, diarrhoea and pneumonia. (See Mallapaty, S. (2024) The pathogens that could spark the next pandemic. Nature, vol. 632, p488.) KP.2 (FLiRT) is now the most common US variant and over the summer was spreading in Europe. Both are subvariants of the Omicron variant and arise from BA.2.86. A descendant of FLiRT with an extra amino acid change in the spike protein, Q493E, was given the names KP.3 and FLuQE, and became a major variant in Australia's New South Wales and may become significant elsewhere. The World Health Organisation (WHO) list of key variants of concern now include among others: Related SARS-CoV-2 / CoVID-19 news, previously covered elsewhere on this site, has been listed here on previous seasonal news pages prior to 2023. However, this has become quite a lengthy list of links and so we stopped providing this listing in the news pages and also, with the vaccines for many in the developed and middle-income nations, the worst of the pandemic is over. Instead you can find this lengthy list of links at the end of our initial SARS-CoV-2 briefing here. It neatly charts over time the key research conducted throughout the pandemic.
And finally… A short natural science YouTube video There's No Single Cradle of Humankind… It would take decades for palaeontologists to realise that maybe there wasn’t just one so-called "cradle of humankind," and realise that maybe they’d been asking the wrong question all along, as PBS Eons explains. You can see its 12-minute video here.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Astronomy & Space Science News
Star clusters have been observed from when the Universe was just 460 million years old. An international team of astronomers and cosmologists have analysed gravitationally lensed light detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The light comes from five small star clusters that existed just 460 million years old. The Universe is just shy of 13.8 billion years old, so these small star clusters existed when the Universe was just 3.33% of its current age. We already know that the first stars got going when the Universe was a little over 1% of its present age. These first stars were huge and very short-lived. Subsequently, stars become more like those we see today but these cosmic gems contained short-lived giants. The cosmic gems (as they have dubbed) just detected are clusters of millions of stars and formed just after or with the earliest stars which existed at the 'cosmic dawn' period of the Universe. These cosmic gem clusters are compact with radii of just a few parsecs. For comparison, the Milky Way has a radius of around 30 parsecs (100,000 light years) – though the main body of the Galaxy has about half this radius. Also, all five of these cosmic gem clusters are close together in a region with a diameter of only 70 parsecs: conversely, the closest star to the Sun is around 1 parsec away. The cosmic gem star clusters were calculated to be at least 50 million years old when they emitted the light that JWST detected, so they must have formed within the first 400 million years of the Universe. Star clusters that formed so early in the history of the Universe might have had a role during the epoch of reionization, when the Universe became ionized by the extreme heat from the aforesaid massive stars exploding. (See Adamo, A. et al (2024) Bound star clusters observed in a lensed galaxy 460 Myr after the Big Bang. Nature, vol. 632, p513-6.) An intermediate-sized black hole has been calculated to have 8,200 times the mass of the Sun. Supermassive black holes billions of times the mass of our Sun lie at the centre of galaxies including our own. Current theory has it that these supermassive objects are in turn created by intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters which, outside of galaxies, can be considered mini-galaxies and that when these merge they form galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centre. However, few intermediate-mass black holes have so far been identified: they are elusive. A hyper-velocity star has been observed that may escape our galaxy. . That means it is moving real fast: about 456 kilometres a second, that’s around a million miles an hour in real money. The observation – which was initially carried out by citizen scientists – is reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The object – called CWISE J1249 – is a brown dwarf ( not quite large enough for stellar fusion) some 408 light years away. It is moving so fast that it might escape our galaxy. Why it is moving so fast nobody knows, but the astronomers who wrote up the observation hypothesise that it might have been ejected from a system when a white dwarf exploded. This is the first hypervelocity very low-mass star or brown dwarf to be found and the nearest of all such systems. It may represent a broader population of very high-velocity, low-mass objects that have undergone extreme accelerations. (See Burgasser, A. J. et al (2024) Discovery of a Hypervelocity L Subdwarf at the Star/Brown Dwarf Mass Limit. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. vol. 971, L25.) High mass black hole detected in the Galaxy away from its centre. Current theories of galactic evolution suggest that there should be few black holes away from galaxies centres. Yet gravitational wave detection suggests that there are a good many of these. Data from ESA's Gaia satellite has uncovered a star's motion about a large, 33 Solar mass, black hole away from the Galactic centre. In fact, it is 1,920 light years away from us. Further, 33 Solar masses for a black hole not at the centre of a galaxy, or dwarf galaxy, is high for Galactic evolution theories. The star orbiting the black hole is itself is a little over three quarters the mass of our Sun and it is orbiting the black hole once every 11.6 years. (See Pannuzo, P. (2024) Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Accepted pre-print.) The New and oldest exoplanet directly seen. We have directly observed 25 exoplanets. That means we have seen them as opposed to deducing that they are there due to their star’s periodic dimming or wobbling. All these exoplanets are young being under 500 million years old (for comparison the Earth will be about 4.5 billion years). The James Webb telescope has now detected a planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, very roughly the same age as the Earth (3.7 to 5.7 billion years old) and it is temperate at 275°k (2°C). However, it is not Earth-like but a gas giant like Jupiter only bigger. It is 12 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Indus. (See Mathews, E. C. et al (2024) A temperate super-Jupiter imaged with JWST in the mid-infrared. Nature Pre-print.) ++++ Dr becky has a 10-minute video here. The Voyager space probe is back but is now in a mysterious region of space. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1’s transmissions became unintelligible in November 2023. It appears that a cosmic ray corrupted a chip. Trawling through computer code, devised half a century ago by people now retired or dead, technicians identified the corrupted chip and redistributed the code among other memory chips. It had been thought that Voyager 1 left the Solar System in 2003 but this was a false alarm. Voyager 1 finally left the Solar System a decade later in 2013 with Voyager 2 leaving in 2019. Leaving the protective bubble (heliosphere) caused by the Sun's magnetic field makes the probes vulnerable to interstellar, charged, high-energy cosmic ray particles. Much of the probe's instrumentation has now been switched off to conserve power which may last for another six years. Prior to the communication hindrance, Voyager 1 had detected both a rise in surrounding magnetic fields as well as higher plasma densities but returned to 'normal' after a few months. It had been thought that these changes might be due to pulses of plasma from the Sun pushing out its magnetic field. The anomalies that began in 2020, however, did not stop, leading some mission scientists to question whether they originated with the Sun at all. It could be that they indicate that Voyager 1, now a light day from Earth, has entered a cloud of ancient interstellar plasma carrying the higher magnetic field of whatever star or star-forming region spat it out. Others Others think t that Voyager 1 still hasn’t completely left the heliosphere… (See Blinder, C. (2024) Voyager 1 science resumes after interstellar crisis. Science, vol. 384, p942-3.) NASA abandons Mars sample returns for now. With a cost of as much as US$11 billion (£8.8 bn) and samples not making it back to Earth, the proposed return of samples collected by the Perseverance rover until the 2040s (it had been hoped they'd be returned in the 2030s). NASA is now seeking alternative proposals to get the sample back to Earth. So far, the Martian rocks we have are from meteorites and they are all igneous. Conversely, Perseverance has collected sedimentary rocks from Jezero crater which was once a lake with an inflowing river delta and the samples might contain biosignatures of past life. There's water deep in the crust of Mars. Researchers based at the University of California have looked at seismic velocities and gravity near the InSight lander. This builds upon previous results from the Insight lander. They conclude that a mid-crust composed of fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water best explains the existing data. Their results have implications for understanding Mars’ water cycle, determining the fates of past surface water, searching for past or extant life. The chances of extant life on Mars just got better. (See Wright, V. et al (2024) Liquid water in the Martian mid-crust. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci.. vol. 121 (35), e2409983121.) It looks like we have already contaminated the Moon's water! US-based researchers have refined previous work on the way water moves across the surface of the Moon. Any water landing on the Moon will see it freeze to ice in the cold Lunar nights and then sublime to a gas during the hot days. However not all this gas escapes the Moon but spreads as the freezing-sublimation cycles continue. The researchers note that rocket fuel, when burnt, generates water. They calculate that so far the various Apollo Lunar landers have contributed some 8.2 tonnes of which some 0.36 tonnes would make it to permanently shadowed regions and remain there as ice. It has been estimated that a total of between 2 and 60 tonnes of surface water was sensed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lyman Alpha Mapping Project on the floors of the larger permanently shadowed south polar craters. If the amount of natural water is just two tonnes, then 0.36 tonnes from rocket exhaust represents a considerable contamination fraction. Further, the researchers note, the proposed the Starship landing has the potential, in some cases where the landing is near the Lunar south pole, to deliver over 10 tonnes of water to its shadow areas. This contamination will obscure the natural water's isotopic composition, which means it will be difficult (impossible) to ascertain this natural water's origins. (See Farrell, W. M. et al (2024) Possible Anthropogenic Contributions to the LAMP-observed Surficial Icy Regolith within Lunar Polar Craters: A Comparison of Apollo and Starship Landings. The Planetary Science Journal, vol. 5, 105.) Ariane-6 has had an almost successful maiden launch. The new ESA launcher cost €4billion (£3.4bn) to develop. Having correctly released a number of small satellites, the upper-stage of the rocket experienced an anomaly right at the end of the flight. Ariane-6 will operate in two configurations: the "62" will incorporate two solid-fuel side boosters for lifting medium-sized payloads; whereas the "64" will have four strap-on boosters to lift the heaviest satellites on the market. Airbus UK to build satellite to monitor Solar storms. Vigil will monitor Solar weather. Coincidentally, and it is coincidental, this announcement followed the greatest Solar storm in 20 years, produced bright auroral lights in skies across the world. This is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission., costing €340m (£290m, US$360). Vigil will enable us to have three to four days additional warning of major Solar storms. Massive black holes, billions the mass of the Sun, are found at the centre of galaxies including early in the Universe's history. How come? To answer this a group of US-based astronomers tested the hypothesis that large black holes found in dwarf galaxies merged as these dwarf galaxies collide. They used the Hubble Space Telescope and found that pairs of dwarf galaxies (dwarfs interacting) had more massive black holes than isolated dwarf galaxies. It is thought that there were many dwarf galaxies in the early Universe and mergers of these dwarfs' central black holes could, it now seems, form the supermassive black holes found in the centre of larger galaxies. (See Mici, M. et al (2024) Low-mass Galaxy Interactions Trigger Black Hole Activity. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 968, L21.) Dark matter may not exist but be an emergent property out of 'flaws' in space-time! This new theory is – it must be noted – controversial, but some say it is worth exploring. These 'topological defects' in space time may help drive orbiting bodies such as rotating galaxies adding to their gravity induced motion. If this is so, then there is no need to invoke the existence of dark matter. (See Lieu, R. (2024) The binding of cosmological structures by massless topological defects. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 531, p1,630–1,636.) An unexplained object has been detected near the Galactic centre! The object is emitting microwaves detected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array interferometer in Chile. The mysterious object seems to be close to the Milky Way’s centre, compact and rich in cold dust and fast-moving gas molecules. But its features don’t match well with those of any known type of astronomical body. The detection does not fit with a black hole, a supernova, a pair of merging stars or anything else. The researchers say that the detection is of, "at present, an observationally unique object". (See Ginsburg, A. et al (2024) A Broad Line-width, Compact, Millimeter-bright Molecular Emission Line Source near the Galactic Center. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 968, L11.) A previously discovered mini-Neptune may possibly be a super-Earth! As planets get bigger they get to a size where hydrogen cannot escape and so become mini-Neptunes. Indeed, in our detection of exoplanets the is a gap in the size of the planets found between large super-Earths and small mini-Neptunes. Volcanic actity on the Moon may have taken place as recently as 123 million years ago in the age of the dinosaurs. There is extensive geologic evidence of ancient volcanic activity on the Moon, but it is unclear how long that volcanism persisted. Magma fountains produce volcanic glasses, which have previously been found in samples of the Moon’s surface. Researchers investigated some 3,000 glass beads in lunar soil samples collected by the Chang’e-5 mission and identified three as having a volcanic origin on the basis of their textures, chemical compositions, and sulphur isotopes. Uranium-lead dating of the three volcanic glass beads shows that they formed 123 million years ago and were subsequently transported to the Chang’e-5 landing site. They measured high abundances of rare earth elements and thorium in these volcanic glass beads, which could indicate that such volcanism was related to local enrichment of heat-generating elements in the mantle sources of the magma, though the basalt itself has little heat-generating elements. (See Wang, B-W. et al. (2024) Returned samples indicate volcanism on the Moon 120 million years ago. Science, vol. 385, p1077-1080.)
And to finally round off the Astronomy & Space news subsection, here are some short videos… The Universe has an axis. The Solar system has a plane. The two align!!!! Coincidence or what? There's a strange, unexplained feature of the Cosmic Microwave Background which seems to be aligned with the Solar System, and we don't know why? Dr Becky asks, Is it real or just a coincidence? And if it is real, does that mean we're missing something from our best cosmological model of the Universe?... You can see the 14-minute video here. And a short astronomy video for you… The Habitable Worlds Observatory will be a space telescope that directly images Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars. Dr Becky reports that it is due to launch in the 2040s. It’s a space telescope that’s set to be the same size as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) but instead of observing in the infrared, it detects visible and ultraviolet light. It’ll sit at the stable point Lagrange point 2, just like JWST, around 1.5 million km away from Earth and the plan is for it to be serviced like the Hubble Space Telescope was by astronauts, but this time by robots. But we need to talk about it now as NASA are firming matters up. You can see the video here.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Science & Science Fiction InterfaceReal life science of SF-like tropes and SF impacts on society
The Roddenberry Foundation announces the lunch of a Prize for Early-Stage AI Ventures. The Roddenberry Foundation – named after the Star Trek creator, for Gene Roddenberry – has launched a prize, the Roddenberry Prize, is open to early-stage ventures internationally. The prize comes with a US$1 million (£790,000) grant. Exo-biological plants may be purple not green! Actually, this is not news, what is news is that researchers have compiled spectra that might be detected from an exoplanet with purple plants. These planetary spectra can be considered biosignatures for which astronomers to keep an eye out. On Earth, not all life uses green chlorophyll. For example, bacteria use bacteriochlorophylls. Ligia Coelho and her USA-based colleagues have used such chlorophylls to model what a planet populated by such species might have in the way of a spectrum. These include organisms that can exhibit a wide range of colours, including yellow, orange, brown, or red due to the presence of different carotenoids, and could colour the surface of exoplanets in many shades. They have developed high-resolution spectra of Earth-like planets, including ocean worlds, snowball planets, frozen worlds, and other Earth analogues. (See Coelho, L. et al. (2024) Purple is the new green: biopigments and spectra of Earth-like purple worlds. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 530, p1,363–1,368.) There may be seven Dyson spheres within 1,000 light years! A collaboration of eight, primarily Swedish-based astronomers have identified seven Dyson sphere candidates within 300 parsecs (about 1,000 light years) of Earth. The astronomers looked a data from ESA's Gaia satellite, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and 2MASS of around five million stars. The Drake equation has had a radical makeover: the apparent lack of detectable alien civilisations is explained! The Drake equation famously brings together a number of parameters (rate of star formation, proportions of stars with planets, proportion of planets habitable, lifetime of putative civilisation etc.) to calculate the likely number of civilisations in the Galaxy today. Now, David Kipping and Geraint Lewis of Columbia U., USA, have published a pre-print that strips back the Drake equation and brings in civilisation birth and death rates. In essence, after a period of time, the number of civilisations in the Galaxy would be in a balance and so be level (constant) – they would reach an equilibrium point. Before then, for much of the time, the number of civilisations would be small but growing. Only in-between these two extremes would there be a narrow (hence improbable) band of time when the number of civilisations would rapidly grow from a very low number to the higher steady-state level (whatever that might be). Given that we do not detect alien civilisations then either that higher, steady-state level is itself low, or we are in that early period of time in the Galaxy when the number of civilisations is low. How soon did the Earth see freshwater on its surface? This has exobiological implications. This is not just an academic question for geoscientists: it has implications for issues such as when the first life could theoretically appear? Researchers primarily based in Australia and China have looked at zircon crystals from 4.0 and 3.4 billion years ago. They found that their oxygen isotopes had less of the heavy 18-oxygen isotope than is found in sea water. As the heavier isotope is less likely to evaporate and condense as freshwater rain it suggests that the zircons formed in the presence of freshwater on land. This suggests that earliest emergence of continental crust on Earth, the presence of fresh water, and the start of the hydrological cycle that likely provided the environmental niches required for primordial life less than 600 million years after Earth’s accretion 4.567 billion years ago. This fits in with contested evidence that the first life arose between 3,770 million and 4,280 million years ago. All this in turn, of course, has implications for exobiology as the earlier life arose the more likely it was an easy as opposed to difficult step and if it was easy here it would be easy on other Earth-like planets in habitable zones. (See Gamaleldien, H. et al (2024) Fresh water on Earth four billion years ago. EGU General Assembly 2024, EGU24-7106.) A living skin has been developed for robots. Shades of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. A small team of Japanese engineers have developed a way of covering a robot with living skin. Skin cells are places in small holes covering the robot's surface. The skin then grows out of the anchoring holes and over the surface of the robot. The engineers were able to cover the robotic face with skin-equivalent that was capable of expressing smiles. (See Kawai, M. et al (2024) Perforation-type anchors inspired by skin ligament for robotic face covered with living skin. Cell Reports Physical Science, vol. 5, 102066.) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is developing so fast that new metrics are needed to measure their capabilities. AI now beats humans at basic tasks – new benchmarks are needed, says a major report, Stanford University’s 7th Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024 charts the meteoric rise of artificial-intelligence tools. A decade ago, the best AI systems in the world were unable to classify objects in images at a human level. AI struggled with language comprehension and could not solve math problems. Today, AI systems routinely exceed human performance on these standard benchmarks and are now close to matching humans with more complicated tasks such as visual common sense reasoning and competition-level mathematics. Such rapid progress in the development of these systems also means that many common benchmarks and tests for assessing them are quickly becoming obsolete. ( Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (2024) Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024. Stanford University; California, USA.) Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now pass exams and fool exam markers! Researchers covertly (but with ethical permission from the university) used artificial intelligence to answer exam questions and these were included in answers from real students to exam markers. Those marking exams could not tell that 94% of the AI-generated answers were from AI and not humans. The grades awarded to AI submissions were on average half a grade boundary higher than that achieved by real students. Across modules there was an 83.4% chance that the AI submissions on a module would outperform a random selection of the same number of real student submissions. (See Scarfe, P. et al (2024) A real-world test of artificial intelligence infiltration of a university examinations system: A “Turing Test” case study. PLoS ONE, vol. 19 (6), e0305354) A new augmented reality (AR) screen has been developed. This screen is compact enough to be worn as spectacles. They have developed a holographic, augmented reality system that will provide 3D displays. The researchers say that their prototype provides a path towards true 3D holographic AR glasses. (See Gopakumar, M. et al (2024) Full-colour 3D holographic augmentedreality displays with metasurface waveguides. Nature, vol. 629, pp791-797.) Role-playing games can spur climate action says educationalist. Writing in Nature, Edinburgh Napier University based Sam Illingworth says that solving problems in a safe, collaborative environment can help us to think outside the box and build empathy – crucial skills in a warming world. Imagine you are the mayor of a coastal city. How high would you build a sea wall, for example, to offer protection from future flooding? The decision involves balancing the risks of breaches against the cost of construction, without knowing how fast seas might rise or what the wider consequences of building it might be. Games that get players to address such questions can help raise awareness of how to address climate change issues. He is one of the developers of Carbon City Zero: World Edition, in which players must cooperate to fight the climate crisis. It is not just a game; it is an invitation to step up and become the protagonists in the most crucial story of our time, he opines. (See Illingworth S. (2024) Why role-playing games can spur climate action. Nature, vol. 629, p729.) Mind reading – We are slowly getting there and can now can brain-scan identify individual words! An ultra-detailed brain map shows active neurons that encode words’ meaning. For the first time, scientists identify individual brain cells linked to the linguistic essence of a word… To an extent, the researchers were able to determine what people were hearing by watching their neurons fire. Although they couldn’t recreate exact sentences, they could tell, for example, that a sentence contained an animal, an action and a food, and the order in which the words appeared… (See Reardon, S. (2024) Ultra-Detailed Brain Map Shows Neurons for Words’ Meanings. Nature, vol. 631, p264.) ClearView AI face recognition has been fined £25.6 million by Netherlands data watchdog. The Netherlands Data Protection Agency reportedly fined ClearView for creating an 'illegal database' of billions of faces in photos. (Reported in Metro, 'ClearView AI fined', p13, 4th September 2024.) Surveillance and personal data control has been a feature of many dystopic SF tales, notably including Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
And to finally round off the Science & SF Interface subsection, here are some short videos… The concept of 'Orbitals' as space habitats are explored in Iain Banks' 'Culture' novels. There are a variety of space habitat concepts explored in SF including, famously, Niven's Ringworld. The Iain Banks Orbital is a ring-shaped Space Habitat over a million miles across with hundreds of times more living area than the entire Earth. Over at Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur, Isaac looks at the concepts of orbitals and their advantages of other types of space habitat. You can see the half-hour video here. So, is interstellar possible with the science we know? Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time takes a look at interstellar travel without Faster Then Light (FTL). FTL is a common SF trope as it gets around plot difficulties of having protagonists travel vast distances over many lifetimes. However, there is an SF trope that is fairly commonly used that does not require FTL for interstellar travel and that is that of the generation ship… In the far future we may have advanced propulsion technologies like matter-antimatter engines and compact fusion drives that allow humans to travel to other stars on timescales shorter than their own lives. But what if those technologies never materialise? Are we imprisoned by the vastness of space –doomed to remain in the solar system of our origin? Perhaps not. A possible path to a contemporary cosmic dream may just be to build a ship which can support human life for several generations; a so-called generation ship! You can see the 20 minute video here. Is consciousness down to quantum effects? Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time takes a look at Nobel laureate Roger Penrose's idea that the brain might enable consciousness through quantum effects: it might be a quantum computer, his rationalisation being known as orchestrated objective reduction: basically, we think – outside the box – like quantum and not analogue computers. Now, the arguments against this are that physicists currently entangle atoms in vacuums at very, very cold temperatures: conversely, brains are warm and wet. Subsequently in the mid-1990s, an anaesthetist, Stuart Hameroff, suggested microtubules found in brain cells might have the macromolecule, the tubulin protein, Penrose was looking for as many anaesthetics work by impairing microtubule function. The latest news is that a paper has been published showing that molecules in microtubules exhibit superradience and superradience (as you all know well?) is a phenomena arising out of quantum entanglement. Could we detect a starship's warp drive? Physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time takes a look at whether we on Earth have the technology to detect a warp drive in our galaxy? You can see the 17-minute video here. Are Dyson Spheres Actually Possible? Over at Cool Worlds the idea of whether a Dyson sphere (a sphere encasing a star) could really work is examined. You can see the video here. What if dinosaurs had survived the asteroid impact? Could we have seen a shared dino-mammal ecology, or even intelligent dinosaurs? In his novel West of Eden the author Harry Harrison wondered what might it be like if the dinosaurs were not all wiped out by a single stone. And now physicist-turned science-futures popularist, Isaac Arthur, runs with the idea… You can see the 30 minute video here. Grabby Aliens re-visited. Over a year ago there was much discussion about a 2021 paper, some scientists nicknamed the ‘Grabby Aliens’ paper. (We covered this a year ago.) The original paper’s lead author was an economist from George Mason University in the US and the other authors were maths (or maths adjacent) academics from the US and UK. You can see the 20 minute video here.
SF's future past of warfare. It is said that today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. Of course, SF is not in the prediction business: it has far more misses than hits. Yet, load a blunderbuss full of a hodgepodge of SFnal concepts and fire it at a barn, and a few will inevitably hit the door. And so we come to a recent YouTube post by Grammaticus Books. His video notes that despite some stonkingly brilliant novels (Heinlein, Haldeman and even a novel by an author whose name does not begin with an 'H') when it comes to warfare prediction many military SF books get it wrong.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 Rest In PeaceThe last season saw the science and science fiction communities sadly lose…
Bill Anders, the US astronaut, has died aged 90 in a tragic air crash. The Apollo 8 lunar module pilot took the iconic 'Earthrise' photograph. Taken in 1968 it was the first picture of the Earth taken by a craft coming around from the far side of the Moon. Shortly after Anders said: "We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth." The picture is said to have inspired the creation of the annual 'Earth Day'. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s. The plane he was flying crashed into the sea. Paul Auster , the US translator and writer, has died aged 77. His early work included detective novels with a psychological element that makes them at least genre-adjacent if not fantastical. His early, clearly fantasy novels include Mr. Vertigo (1994) and Timbuktu (1999). Allen Joseph Bard, the US electrochemist, has died aged 90. He redefined electrochemistry (often described as its 'father') through his work, which spanned: electrode reactions, chemiluminescence, semiconductor electrodes, single-molecule electrochemistry, and innovative instrumentation. He has garnered the Priestley Medal in 2002, the Welch Award (2004), the Wolf Prize (2008), the National Medal of Science (2013), the Enrico Fermi Award (2014) and the King Faisal International Prize (2019). Roger Bozzetto, the French SF critic and academic, has died aged 86. He was Professor Emeritus of general and comparative literature at the University of Provence. He was also a member of the CERLI (Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur les Littératures de l’Imaginaire/Center for Studies and Research on the Literatures of the Imagination) academic collective. Mark D. Bright, the US comics artist, has died aged 68. His credit name was 'Doc Bright' (a play on his initials). He worked for both Marvel and DC Comics including on Iron Man and The Green Lantern among many other superhero characters. In recent years he moved into storyboarding for commercials, and live-action television and feature films, notably including M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender film but still drawing for comics. He is also noted for the Predator 2 comic adaptation of the film. Carolyn Caughey, the Canadian born, British resident publisher, has died. Her early editorial work was with New English Library which was then taken over by Hodder & Stoughton where she published crime (including Dorothy L. Sayers) and SF/F. In later years, she divided her time between London and Canada. She left Hodder in the early 2000s but continued to work with several authors on a freelance basis. She was a notable feature of British SF/F publishing. Kenneth Cope, the British actor, has died aged 93. His most famous genre role was that of the ghost detective, Marty, in the TV series Randell & Hopkirk (Deceased). Lyn Conway, the US computer scientist, has died aged 86. She is best known in computing for initiating the design of what would become the Mead–Conway VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integrated) microchip chip design revolution of the 1980s. (These chips are the modern chips of today with RAM, ROM, and CPU functions all on one chip and not separately.) Before then she had been recruited by IBM in 1964 but was fired (1968) following her coming out with her desire to gender transition. (In 2020, IBM apologised for dismissing her.) She went on to work at Memorex (1969-1972) and then Xerox PARC (from 1973). She co-authored, with Carver Mead, Introduction to VLSI Systems (1980) became a standard university text. In the early 1980s, Conway left Xerox to join DARPA, where she was a key architect of the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative. In 1985 she became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. From 1999 she came out as having transitioned and went on to be involved in transgender activism. In 2014, Time Magazine cited her as one of "21 Transgender People Who Influenced American Culture". Among her many awards are the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award and being inducted into the Electronic Design Hall of Fame. Roger Corman, the US film director, has died aged 98. He was known for his low-budget genre films and for arranging the distribution of non-US films. Some are cult, and some – it has to be said – are right turkeys. He was the director (55 films) and/or producer (385+) of a total of over 400 films. The genre films he directed include (among many others): Day the World Ended (1955); It Conquered the World (1956); Not of This Earth (1957); Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957); The Undead (1957); Teenage Caveman (1958); Last Woman on Earth (1960); The Little Shop of Horrors (1960); Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961); The Pit and the Pendulum (1961); The Raven (1963); X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963); The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and Frankenstein Unbound (1990). The films he produced, but did not direct, among much else, included: Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954); Night of the Blood Beast (1958); Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965); The Dunwich Horror (1970); Death Race 2000 (1975); Battle Beyond the Stars (1980); Galaxy of Terror (1980); Forbidden World (1982); Space Raiders (1983); Masque of the Red Death (1989 remake); Dracula Rising (1993); The Fantastic Four (1994); Raptor (2001); Dinocroc (2004); Supergator (2007) and Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012); Death Race 2050 (2017). Ray Daley, the British writer, has died aged 84. His work was at first self-published before he became professionally published. His work includes cyberpunk SF. Frans de Waal, the Dutch primatologist, has died aged 75. He initially worked for the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center in 1981 before moving to Emory University in 1991, where he was a professor in the Department of Psychology. He was the author of 15 books mainly on the topic of animal sentience. he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2007. In 2012, he won an Ig Nobel Prize for a paper he co-authored showing that chimpanzees could match familiar individuals’ faces with their posteriors, suggesting that they had mental representations of their group mates. Roger Dicken, the British special effects expert, has died aged 84. His genre work, among much else, includes that on Scars of Dracula (1974), The Land That Time Forgot (1974),Warlords of Atlantis (1978) and Q: The Winged Serpent (1982). Unfortunately, he is not credited for his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He is noted for his work on Alien (1979): the chest-burster effects. He was co-short-listed (with Jim Danforth) for a special-effects Oscar for When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1971). Shelley Duvall , the US actress, has died aged 75. She had aspirations to be a scientist and majored in nutrition and diet therapy. A chance encounter with the director Robert Altman which led to her having a role in Brewster McCloud (1970). Her genre roles on television included seven episodes of Faerie Tale Theatre (1982-'86). But in films, and in genre terms, she is best known for co-starring in The Shining (1980) -- trailer here -- and Popeye (1980) -- trailer here as well as appearing in The Time Bandits (1981) as an awkward lover in different time periods. The awards she garnered included a Peabody Award (1984) for Faerie Tale Theatre. Akira Endo, the Japanese biochemist, has died aged 90. His work looked at the relationship between fungi and cholesterol biosynthesis led to the development of statin, cholesterol lowering drugs. His work garnered him the Japan Prize (2006), the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (2008), the Canada Gairdner International Award (2017) and the European Society of Cardiology Gold Medal Award (2021). However, he never derived financial benefit from his discovery, despite statins being among the most widely prescribed medications. Some have opined that he should have been a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Joe Engle, the US test pilot, has died aged 91. He was the first to touch the edge of space and later to go beyond it in two different aircraft, an X-15 and a space shuttle. He was part of the support crew for Apollo 10 in May 1969, two months before the first moon landing by Apollo 11. He went on to train as the backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 14 in 1971 and was assigned to the crew of Apollo 17 in December 1972 but was replaced by geologist Harrison Schmitt M. J. Engh, the US author, has died aged 91. She also wrote as Jane Beauclerk and Mary Jane Engh. She wrote four SF books, from Arslan (1976) for which she is best known, to Rainbow Man (1993). She was a librarian and teacher with an interest in Roman times. She also wrote non-fiction including Femina Habilis: A Biographical Dictionary of Active Women in the Ancient Roman World from Earliest Times to 527 CE co-authored with Kathryn E. Meyer. In 2009 she was named 'Author emerita' by the SFWA. H. Bruce Franklin, the US cultural and historical scholar, has died aged 90. He was notable for receiving top awards for his lifetime scholarship in fields as diverse as American studies, prison literature and marine ecology. He wrote or edited twenty books. Of genre relevance was his work on science fiction. He was the author of Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the 19th Century (1966, revised 1995), War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination (1988, revised 2008)Star Trek and History (2013). He had a lifelong passion for SF and had been a guest curator on topics about Star Trek and Star Wars. He edited the SF short story anthology Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (1966 to 1995 in four successively expanded editions). He received the Pilgrim Award in 1983. He won the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for his article 'The Vietnam War as American SF and Fantasy' (1990). Ray Garton Jnr., the US horror writer, has died aged 61. He is the author of over 50 books. His novel Live Girls was short-listed for a Bram Stoker Award. In 2006 he was cited as a World Horror Convention Grand Master. Many of his shorts appear in two collections Methods of Madness (1990) and Pieces of Hate (1996). Alasdair Geddes OBE, the British clinician, has died aged 89. His early work concerned research on antibiotics. He then became Professor of Infection at the University of Birmingham Medical School. In 1973, the UK's Department of Health assigned him as a visiting fellow with the World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication effort in Bangladesh. He diagnosed Janet Parker, a fellow smallpox researcher, with smallpox. She later died on 11th September 1978 and became the last reported smallpox fatality. He later, early in the 21st century, became an adviser on bioterrorism for the UK's Department of Health, his chief role being in the national smallpox plan and in bio-defence training. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1996 New Year Honours for services to Medicine. Ivan Geisler, the US fan, has died aged 80. He was a longstanding member of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association. He was also an amateur astronomer. Ian Gelder, the British actor, has died aged 74. His genre credits include: 12 episodes as Kevan Lannister in Game of Thrones, five episodes of Torchwood, and two episodes (voice only) of Doctor Who. Richard Goldstein, the US radar astronomer, has died aged 97. He was the first to obtain radar echoes from Venus, and measured its retrograde rotation, and Mars. He was also the first to obtain a radar echo from an asteroid (Icarus) and the moons of Jupiter. In the 1990s he used radar to detect space junk. In 2000 he garnered the NASA Honors Award for Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal. Sharon Green, the US author, has died aged 79. She wrote science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and romance. Her early works were marketed as similar to John Norman's 'Gor' series but actually were meant to counter them with powerful female characters. She is known for a number of series of books including: Jalav: Amazon Warrior series (1982-1986), the 'Terrilian' series (1982-1987), the 'Diana Santee, Spaceways Agent' series (1984-1985), the 'Far Side of Forever series (1987-1989), the 'Hidden Realms series' (1993-1996), 'The Blending' series (1996-1999) and the 'Blending Enthroned series' (200-2002). Her standalone novels include: Rebel Prince (1986) and Enchanting (1994). Jon Haward, the British comics artist, has died aged 58. His artwork includes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Biker Mice from Mars and, for 2000AD, Judge Dredd and Sinister Dexter, a couple of Tharg's Future Shocks stories among others. In 2009 his Macbeth (with John McDonald) won the Bronze Medal "Graphic Novel/Drawn Book – Drama/Documentary" category of the Independent Publisher Book Award. Yamamoto Hiroshi, the Japanese author, has died aged 68. In addition to SF, he wrote books debunking pseudoscience. In the late 1970s, he was one of the founding members of the Role Playing Game collective 'Syntax Error', later known as 'Group SNE'. His first novel was Laplace no Ma [Laplace's Demon] in 1978, which tied into the Ghost Hunter computer game. His Kyonen wa Ii-nen ni Naru Daro [Last Year Should Be a Good Year garnered his a Seiun [Nebula] Award in 2011. James Earl Jones, the US actor, has died aged 93. He made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964). SFnally most famous for voicing Star Wars Darth Veder, and in fantasy for voicing Mufasa in The Lion King (1994). He also guest starred as a version of himself in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. Craig Jordan, the US-British pharmacologist, has died aged 76. Born in Texas (US), he moved to England with his family as a child to Cheshire. He went to the University of Leeds where he undertook undergraduate and postgraduate studies in pharmacology with the latter focussing on anti-estrogens. He was the first to discover the breast cancer prevention properties of tamoxifen. He later worked on developing a new Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for post-menopausal women that prevents breast cancer. In the late 1980s he found that raloxifene protected rats, whose ovaries had been removed from, osteoporosis. This finding was at first rejected by all the osteoporosis journals but which was a discovery vindicated by a large-scale trial in 1991. he also had a sense of duty and was volunteer training to be an officer when a student at Leeds and took courses in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare. Before completing his doctorate, he was recruited into the UK Intelligence Corps becoming the youngest captain in the service. He became a reservist in the UK Special Air Service responsible for advising the UK and US armies on biological and chemical defence. In 1993 he garnered the Gaddum Memorial Award from the British Pharmacological Society. In 2019 he was given an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and in 2019 was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli-American author, psychologist, and economist, has died aged 90. He survived World War II in occupied France, before moving to what would become Israel. His early psychology career was as a lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1969 he began a lengthy collaboration with Amos Tversky on judgement and decision making, developing an early version of 'prospect theory'. The two then also teamed with Paul Slovic to edit a compilation entitled Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1982) that was a summary of their work and of other recent advances. Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 "for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty". In 2015, The Economist listed him as the seventh most influential economist in the world. He also made contributions to the following areas of psychology: the base rate fallacy, cognitive bias; loss aversion; optimism bias, reference class forecasting and status quo bias. Much is covered in his 2015 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. His central message might be summed up as that human reason, left to its own devices, is apt to engage in a number of fallacies and systematic errors. So if we want to make better decisions in our personal lives and as a society, we ought to be aware of these biases and seek workarounds. Deborah Kolodji, the US poet, has died aged 64. She is known for her SF and fantasy themed poetry, especially the haiku form. She edited or co-edited several anthologies of English-language haiku. Her haiku collection Highway of Sleeping Towns garnered a 2016 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. She was president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association in the US for half a decade up to 2011. In her professional life she was a maths graduate working in computer science. Olga Larionova, the Russian SF author, has died aged 88. 'Larionova' was the pen name of Olga Nikolayevna Tideman who began writing in the Soviet era with A Leopard from the top of Kilimanjaro (1965). Her awards include the Aelita Prize (1987), Bronze Snail Awards (1992, 1997) and the Wanderer award (2001). Tsung-Dao Lee, the Chinese American physicist, has died aged 97. He left China in 1946 for the US. In 1957, at the age of 30, Lee won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Chen Ning Yang for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak interactions. He remains the youngest Nobel laureate in the science fields after World War II. He is the thirdyoungest Nobel laureate in sciences. He also helped develop super computers in 1998 and 2001: 1 teraflop and 10 teraflop capability respectively. In 2008, he was one of a score of US Nobel winners to lobby President George W. Bush to restore US basic research investment. He also worked on the physics of white dwarfs. Doug Lewis, the US book dealer and publisher has died aged 69. With his now late wife Toni, he ran the Little Bookshop of Horror/Roadkill Press in Arvada, Colorado, US. It was especially noted for its The Night Voices series of readings by SF/F authors. This led to the creation of Roadkill Press which produced high-quality chap books of readings. Both the shop and the imprint garnered a World Fantasy Award in the Nonprofessional category. Michael Linaker, the British SF author, has died aged 84. His 'Scorpion' duology, comprised of Scorpion (1981) and Scorpion: Second Generation (1982), were both both Horror SF. He is also known for his near-future police procedurals 'Cade' sequence beginning with Cade #1: Darksiders (1992) written under the pseudonym Mike Linaker. Mike Lynch MA, PhD, FRS, FREng, OBE, DL., the British tech entrepreneur, has died aged 59. A science graduate from Cambridge University, his first company was Lynett Systems Ltd that made synthesisrs and sound samplers, before founding Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialised in computer-based fingerprint recognition. The three resulting spin-out companies from this included the Autonomy Corporation, a search software company. This he sold for more than US$11 billion (£8.6 billion) to the US firm Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett-Packard quickly decided they did not like the deal due to purportive accounting irregularities and took Lynch to court in Britain to recoup some of the money. The allegations were investigated by the UK Serious Fraud but the investigation was closed when they could not find sufficient evidence. Lynch was indicted for fraud in the US along with Stephen Chamberlain, former vice president of finance at Autonomy. Earlier in 2018 Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance chief officer, had been found guilty of fraud in the US and sentenced to five years in prison. In 2019, Hewlett-Packard brought a civil action for fraud in the High Court in London and won. Lynch was then extradited to the US but he had prepared his defence assuming Hewlett-Packard would use the same arguments they had in the British case. So Lynch's team recruited members of the public and rehearsed their defence arguments again and again until they had a form of defence that was understandable to lay people. Lynch's team won their case. Lynch celebrated his US acquittal in the with a cruise on the family superyacht, Bayesian. The yacht sank off the coast of Sicily in a storm, drown Lynch, his daughter, four guests and a member of the crew: there were 15 survivors including Lynch's wife. Some consider had not the tech entrepreneur been mired in investigations and court cases for around a decade, he would have made a major contribution to the artificial intelligence revolution. Carol MacLeod, has died aged 72. She was the wife of SF author Ken MacLeod who was a Guest of Honour at this year's Worldcon in Glasgow. She sadly passed a few days after the convention. Sincere condolences to Ken. Sandy (Sanford) Meschkow, the US fan, has died aged 83. He was active in the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and served a term as its President. An engineer outside of fandom, he spent a spell in the 1960s working for NASA. Nick Mills, the British fan, has died aged 67. He joined fandom in his first year at university when several members of the Warwick University SF Society attended Novacon 7 (1977). At university, he was heavily into Dungeons & Dragons. Following university, he was on the committee of a number of Novacons beginning with Novacon 16 (1986) and also a couple of Eastercons: Illumination (1992) and Paragon (2001). He was a longstanding member of the Sheffield SF Society. He also appeared on a number of television and radio quiz shows including University Challenge and Brain of Britain. Michael Mosley, the British clinician turned broadcaster, has died aged 67. Disillusioned with psychiatry, he joined the BBC as a producer in 1985. He moved to the front of the camera in 2007 and went on to make at least one documentary most years, mainly for the BBC but also Channel 4 (which is a self-funded, publicly owned channel). From 2021, he wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 programme Just One Thing, that gave examples of one thing you can do to improve your health. He also regularly appeared on day-time TV magazine shows discussing health issues. He is known for popularising the 5:2 diet whereby two days a week are those of very low calorie intake. This enabled him to lose weight and reverse the type 2 diabetes with which he had been diagnosed. He died of sunstroke when out for a lengthy walk on the Greek island of Symi while on holiday with his wife. He was nominated as Medical Journalist of the Year (1995) by the British Medical Association. In 2002, he was nominated for an Emmy as an executive producer for The Human Face along with John Cleese. Bob Newhart, the US comedian, has died aged 94. A much loved comedian whose principal genre contribution was playing Arthur Jeffries / Professor Proton in The Big Bang Theory for which he won a Primetime Emmy in 2013. Lyubomir Nikolov, the Bulgarian SF writer, has died aged 74. Also known as 'Narvi', he is the award-winning author of the novels The Mole, A Worm Under the Autumn Wind and The Grey Road. He also was responsible for translating J. R. R. Tolkien into Bulgarian as well as the works of other authors including Stephen King and Robert Sheckley. Priscilla Olson , the US fan, had died aged 77. She and husband Mark, were involved in the NESFA Press to bring back neglected SF works. She was a member of a member of Binghamton Fandom. She was a member of the New England Science Fiction Association and served a term as its Vice-President. She is noted for her conrunning and she chaired Boskone 29 (1992), Boskone 38 (2001), Boskone 42 (2005), and Boskone 48 (2011). She was fan Guest of Honour at: Minicon 34 (1999); ConCertino '03 (2003) and WindyCon 33 (2006). Don Perlin, the US comics artist, has died aged 94. He is best known for Marvel Comics' Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight (which he co-created), The Defenders and Ghost Rider. In the 1990s, he worked for Valiant Comics, both as artist and editor, where he co-created Bloodshot. Of particular genre note, he drew Robur the Conqueror, an adaptation of a Jules Verne novel about a power-mad genius and his 'flying apparatus', for The Gilberton Company's Classics Illustrated #162. he also worked on issues of Thor, Spider-Man, and the Sub-Mariner. He garnered the 1997 National Cartoonists Society Comic Books Award. David T. Redd, the Welsh author, has died aged 78. He wrote short fiction with some three dozen stories to his name. He was occasionally involved in British fandom in the 1960s. Many of his stories have appeared in Collected Stories (2018). John M. Roberts, the US author, has died aged 77. His first SF novel was The Strayed Sheep of Charun (1977). He is noted for the 'young adult' 'Spacer' series of novels and also fantasy novels set in Robert E. Howard's Conan universe. William Russell (real name William Russell Enoch), the British actor, has died aged 99. He starred in the title role of the television series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–1957). His genre roles included a Kryptonian elder in Superman (1978). However, he is famously known for playing the school science teacher Ian Chesterton in Doctor Who from its first episode in 1963 to 1965. He returned as Ian for a 2022 cameo in 'The Power of the Doctor', 57 years after the character left, which garnered him a Guinness World Record for the longest gap between TV appearances. Rhondi Ann Salsitz, the US author, has died aged 75. She wrote under the names Sara Hanover, Emily Drake, Anne Knight, Elizabeth Forrest, Charles Ingrid, Rhondi Greening, Rhondi Vilott Salsitz, Jenna Rhodes, R.A.V. Salsitz, and Rhondi Vilott. She wrote mainly fantasy and penned over a score of novels. She is known for the 'Elven Ways' series written under the pen name Jenna Rhodes and the space opera 'Sand Wars' books. Maxine Frank Singer, the US molecular biologist, has died aged 93. She was known for her contributions to solving the genetic code, her role in the ethical and regulatory debates on recombinant DNA techniques and its risks. Among the awards she garnered were the National Medal of Science (1992) and the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (2007). Richard Sherman, the US songwriter, has died aged 95. With his brother Robert, he is credited for more film picture musical songscores than any other song-writing team in film history. A number of these were genre related including: Mary Poppins (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Snoopy Come Home (1972) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), among others. In 1958, Sherman's brother Robert founded the music publishing company, Music World Corporation, which later worked with Disney's BMI publishing arm, Wonderland Music Company. The brothers garnered earned 9 Academy Award nominations, 2 Grammy Awards, 4 Grammy Award nominations and 23 gold and platinum albums. He also was a music consultant for Mary Poppins Returns. Pat Sims, the US fan, has died aged 87. She entered fandom in the 1960s participating in the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club. She met her to be husband Roger Sims at Midwestcon. They were active in Detroit fandom for many years, then in Cincinnati and then Florida. They co-chaired Ditto 10 (1997), Ditto 17 (2004) and FanHistoriCon 9 (1999). They were DUFF (Down Under Fan Fund) delegates in 1995. In 2002 she garnered a Worldcon Big Heart Award. Maxine Singer, the US molecular biologist, has died aged 93. She made significant contributions to the biloogy of Recombinant DNA and the ethics of such work and applications. In the 1980s she was the Chief of the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute. She received the National Medal of Science in 1992 "for her outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist". She wrote over 100 science papers, and also published several books with co-author Paul Berg intended to help the public have a better understanding of molecular genetics. Fran Skene, the Canadian fan, has died aged 86. She chaired the 1977 Westercon, held in Vancouver, and three of the city’s annual V-CON (1978, 1981 & 1986). Her fanzine, Love Makes the World Go Awry ran for half a decade to 1983. In real life she was a librarian at the Greater Vancouver Public Library. Carl-Eddy Skovgaard, the Danish fan, has died aged 73. He was a conrunner and active in both the Danish Fan Association and Science Fiction Cirklen for which he edited over 150 books. Elena Steier, the US comics creator and art teacher, has died age 66. Her creations include: 'The Ramp Rats' (for the Detroit Metropolitan News and The Airport News), 'The Goth Scouts' (for The South Shore Monthly Newspaper) and 'The Vampire Bed and Breakfast' (a self-published comic book). She was a long-time member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Edward Stone, the US physicist, has died aged 88. His early post-doc work was on cosmic rays. In 1972, he became project scientist for the Voyager missions to the outer Solar System. He was also the principal investigator for the Cosmic Ray System experiment on both Voyager spacecraft. As the spokesman for the Voyager science team, he became known to the public. Subsequently he was the principal investigator on nine NASA missions. He then was the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (1991 -2001). During that time key projects were: the Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover; the Mars Global Surveyor; the Deep Space 1; the TOPEX/Poseidon; the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT); and the launches of Cassini, Stardust, and 2001 Mars Odyssey. In 2022, owing to declining health, he retired as Voyager project scientist and became emeritus professor at Caltech. His many awards include: Carl Sagan Memorial Award (1999) and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (2013). The minor planet, 5841 Stone is named after him. Sheila Strickland, the US fan, has died. She was based in Louisiana. Lubert Stryer, the US physiologist and clinician, has died aged 86. He was born in China of a German father and Russian mother, before they moved to the US when ten years old. His work focused on large biomolecules' interactions with light. His undergraduate textbook, Biochemistry has, over the years, had ten editions of which he wrote the first four single handedly. In the course of his career, he pioneered fluorescence methods for measuring distances within macromolecules, elucidated the visual signal transduction cascade, and helped develop DNA microarrays. In 2007 he received the National Medal of Science from President Bush. Donald Sutherland, the Canadian actor, has died aged 88. He had a long and prolific career. His genre offerings include: Castle of the Living Dead (1964); Doctor Terror's House of Horror (1965); Billion Dollar Brain (1967); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978); Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992); The Lifeforce Experiment (1994); Outbreak (1995); Virus (1999) – an SF horror, firm favourite with that year's Festival of Fantastic Films; Space Cowboys (2000); Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001); An American Haunting (2005); The Hunger Games (2012); The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013); The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay – Part 1 (2013); The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay – Part 2 (2015); Ad Astra (2019); Moonfall (2015); and Ad Astra (2022). He also appeared in a few genre television series including The Avengers (1967); and The Champions (1969). Robert Towne, the US screenwriter and director, has died aged 89. His genre credits include: directing and starring in Last Woman on Earth (1960), directing Creature from the Haunted Sea, scriptwriting pseudonymously Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) which was short-listed for an Oscar, writing and directing Tequila Sunrise (1988) and writing for episodes of The Outer Limits and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. He also collaborated with Tom Cruise on the first two instalments of the Mission: Impossible franchise (1996, 2000). John G. Trimble, the US fan, has died aged 87. He was a long-time Los Angeles fan, con-runner, fanzine publisher. He and his wife, Bjo, were the 2002 Worldcon fan guests of honour. The couple are best known for organising in the 1960s a write-in campaign to NBC to save Star Trek, and this is said to have led to the show's third season. It arguably gave the show enough episodes for it to go into syndication and these repeats proved popular, keeping interest I the show alive. In 2016, both John and Bjo were brought on stage at Star Trek Las Vegas in celebration of the 50th anniversary, and the Star Trek franchise team surprised and honoured them with a painted portrait of them by artist J. K. Woodward. Brian Trueman, the actor and scriptwriter, has died aged 92. He was best known for his work with animation company Cosgrove Hall Films, particularly Danger Mouse (from 1981) and Count Duckula. His other genre shows included Jamie and the Magic Torch, The Wind in the Willows and The Reluctant Dragon. Gudrun Ure, the Scot's British actress, has died aged 98. She had a full acting career but in genre terms is best known as portraying Super Gran in the series of the same name based on the books by Forrest Wilson. The series concerned Granny Smith, who gains superpowers after accidentally being hit by an inventor's 'magic' ray. She then uses her powers to protect the residents of Chiselton from a series of villains – most notably the scheming Scunner Campbell played by Scottish actor Iain Cuthbertson. The programme was hugely popular and was sold abroad to around 60 other countries. In 1985 it won an International Emmy award in the Children and Young People category. You can see the show's first episode here. Jennifer (Jenny) Vaughan OBE, the British medical doctor, has died aged 55. She specialised in neurology and disorders that affected movement, especially on the genetics of early-onset Parkinson's disease. She co-led the "Learn Not Blame” campaign, a Doctors' Association UK campaign to end blame culture within the National Health Service (NHS). (She was a leading light in the Doctors' Association UK.) This successfully contributed to there being reform the law on gross negligence, so that doctors would learn from mistakes and not fear blame. She also noticed that trials arising out of negligence accusations affected a high proportion of doctors from ethnic backgrounds. Much is covered in her 2022 TEDxNHS talk on reconnecting with hope when things go wrong. During the CoVID-19 pandemic she campaigned to get proper personal protective equipment and legal protection for healthcare staff. She was awarded with an OBE in 2023. This spring she lost her battle with cancer. Leane Verhulst, the US fan, has died aged 54. She was an active conrunner and chaired Capricon 28 in 2008. She was also a part of the US Science Fiction Outreach Program that donates books to those in need. Out side of fandom she was a computer programmer. Vladimir Veverka, the Czech fan, has died aged 65. In 1984 he was the founding editor of the newszine Interkom. Diana Wall, the environmental scientist, has died aged 80. Her doctorate was on plant pathology. She then moved on to soil science. From 1989, her research looked at the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys and its Wall Valley was named after her. She served terms as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Ecological Society of America, the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, and the Society of Nematologists. She also co-chaired the Millennium Development Goals Committee of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She garnered the Tyler Prize (sometimes described as the Nobel for environmental scientists). Jeff Warner, the US conrunner, has died. He is noted for co-founding the I-CON series of conventions. Taral Wayne, the Canadian fan artist, has died aged 71. He joined fandom in 1971 and was a longstanding member of the Ontario Science Fiction Club. He co-edited the newszine DNQ with Victoria Vayne in 1978–'84 but was involved with well over a score of others. He also drew comics professionally. He was short-listed for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist eleven times in 1987–1990, 2000, 2001 and 2008–2011. He had not been well following a stroke in 2017. George Wells, the US fan, has died aged 81. He joined fandom in 1958 and was active in New York fandom. Ruth Westheimer, the German borne, US psychologist, has died aged 96. She escaped Germany aged ten leaving her parents who were then murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. She studied psychology and, moving to the US in 1956, sociology before obtaining a doctorate in education. She became well-know for her work in seΧeducation and became a postdoctoral researcher at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She had a high-profile media career promoting contraception and was a supporter for research into AIDS. By 1983 her show was the top-rated radio show in the US and her TV work made her a household name. She also had an SFnal moment with an appearance as herself in 'Dr. Ruth', a 1993 episode of Quantum Leap. She authored well over a score of books. She was made a non-physician Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and was added to the Bronx Walk of Fame. She also received the American Academy of Clinical SeΧology Medal of SeΧology and the Yale Mental Health Research Advocacy Award among a number of others. Heather Wood, the US publisher, has died aged 79. she was assistant to Tor’s (US) President and Publisher Tom Doherty, and a consulting editor for Tor (US) Books. She was also a professional folk singer and contributed to the World Fantasy Convention’s “Musical Interlude”.
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Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff | Key SF News & Awards |
Autumn 2024 End Bits & Thanks
More science and SF news will be summarised in our Spring 2025 upload in January Thanks for information, pointers and news for this seasonal page goes to: Ansible, Tim Atkinson, Fancylopaedia, File 770, Silviu Genescu, various members of North Heath SF, Ian Hunter, Julie Perry (Google Scholar wizard), SF Encyclopaedia, SFX Magazine, Boris Sidyuk, Peter Tyers, and Peter Wyndham, not to mention information provided by publishers. Stories based on papers taken from various academic science journals or their websites have their sources cited. Additional thanks for news coverage goes to not least to the very many representatives of SF conventions, groups and professional companies' PR/marketing folk who sent in news. These last have their own ventures promoted on this page. If you feel that your news, or SF news that interests you, should be here then you need to let us know (as we cannot report what we are not told). :-) Thanks for spreading the word of this seasonal edition goes to Ansible, File 770, Caroline Mullan, and Peter Wyndham. News for the next seasonal upload – that covers the Spring 2025 period – needs to be in before 15th December 2024. News is especially sought concerns SF author news as well as that relating to national SF conventions: size, number of those attending, prizes and any special happenings. To contact us see here and try to put something clearly science fictional in the subject line in case your message ends up being spam-filtered and needs rescuing. Be positive
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