Science Fiction News
& Recent Science Review for the
Autumn 2024

(N.B. Our seasons relate to the northern hemisphere 'academic year'.)

This SF & science news page builds on the
seasonal science fiction news previously posted.

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

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?
          And so it was with a Dublin-Finland sense of déjà vous that folk were regularly turned away from rooms -- and being a late arriving programme participant was not a good enough excuse.  The con newsletter repeatedly called for not trying to get into full rooms and that there was no standing at the back of rooms.
          And let's not mention its publication policy breaking WSFS (World SF Society) rules. Apparently it is alright for a Worldcon to pick and choose which rules it follows.
          Don't Worldcon organisers ever learn?  Apparently not, either being unwilling or unable to address attending number issues on con demographics or follow WSFS rules.  We will probably all see it again should Dublin (and it probably will) win its forthcoming bid for the 2029 Worldcon.
          And so it goes…

 

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…
Aside from this seasonal news page, elsewhere this issue (vol. 34 (5) Autumn 2024) we have stand-alone items on:-
How common are exo-Earths with water? – Jonathan Cowie
Is the lack of watery, inner rocky planets an early Fermi filter? New science sheds possible light.
Contabile 34: Triple Time – Peter Tyers
Britain's 34th Annual UK Filk Music Convention reviewed.
Levitation – The 2024 British Eastercon – Arthur Chappell
Britain's national convention reviewed.
Glasgow – The 2024 SF Worldcon – Tim Atkinson
What's it like to attend a Worldcon for the first time?
From engineer and SF fan to astronomy – Mark Paice
Taking up astronomy as a hobby.
Ten years ago exactly. One from the archives:
My 25 years of Eurocons & ESFS – Roberto Quaglia
After a decade as the European SF Society's Vice-Chair, Roberto reflects on a quarter of a century of Eurocons.
Twenty years ago exactly. One from the archives:
Robert Sheckley interviewed
The SF author and Grandmaster reveals his influences, format preferences, idea sources and comments on working collaboratively.
          Plus well over thirty (30!) SF/F/H standalone fiction book and non-fiction SF and popular science book reviews.  Hopefully something here for every science type who is into SF in this our 37th year. For full details of the latest contents see our What's New page.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

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 principal category Hugo wins this year were:-
          Best Novel: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
          Best Novella: Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
          Best (Book) Series: Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie
          Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
          Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: The Last of Us: 'Long, Long Time'.
          So them's the results of the principal (as determined by the number of nominators) categories.  Away from the results, the Hugo Administrators admirably detected and dealt with an attempt to fraudulently rig the vote. You can read all about this later on here.
          Other category (win information) (those other categories) can be found at thehugoawards.orgLast year's principal category Hugo winners here.

The 2024 Locus Awards for 2023 works short-lists have been announced.  The principal SF (excluding things like short story, fantasy, etc) categories were:
Science Fiction Novel
          The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu
          A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard
          Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
          Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott
          Translation State by Ann Leckie
          The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
          Starter Villain by John Scalzi
          Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky
          System Collapse by Martha Wells (WINNER)
          The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis
First Novel
          Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
          The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud
          The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (WINNER)
          Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou
          These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
          Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
          The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan
          Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
          Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
          Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs
For details of the other category short-lists (novella, short story, horror, fantasy, etc) see locusmag.com.
          As it happened back at the start of the year Translation State, Lords of Uncreation and Some Desperate Glory made our 'Best SF novels' of 2023 list.

The 2024 Arthur C. Clarke (SF) Award short-list has been announced for 2023 works.  These are:
          Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
          The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
          In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
          The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
          Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
          Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
          The winner was In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books).  The novel tells the story of Leigh, a young girl who grows up in the Netherlands amid the spectre of climate change and eventually becomes a marine scientist exploring ocean trenches and investigating an anomaly at the edge of the solar system.
          The Clarke SF Award is a juried award.
          As it happened back at the start of the year Some Desperate Glory made our 'Best SF novels' of 2023 list.

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).
          Novel
                    The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
          Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Dramatic Presentation
                    Barbie
Details of all the category wins can be found at www.sfwa.org.  This year's principal category short list we reported last season.  +++ Last year's principal win Nebulas reported here.

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).
          SF Novel: Starter Villain by John Scalzi
          Fantasy Novel: Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
          Best TV: Fallout
          Best Film: Dune: Part Two

 

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.
          In addition to patterns observable in the data, the administration team received a confidential report that at least one person had sponsored the purchase of WSFS memberships by large numbers of individuals, who were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished.
          The administration team has no evidence that the finalist in question was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. They are therefore not identifying them.
          This is, of course, another sad day for the Worldcon and Hugo Awards, especially given last year's events with the 2023 Chengdu China Worldcon.  However, it appears that this year's administration team (which is unconnected to those that ran last year's Worldcon or Hugos) have acted prudently and as openly as possible.  This, at least, is good news.

 

Other SF news includes:-

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:
  - Site selection win for the 2023 China Worldcon bid
  - Editorial call to dis-invite China guest who supports Putin's war
  - Another of China's guests supports Uyghurs 're-education'
  - Russian China guest heads petition supporting Putin's war
  - China's western guest happy to share Worldcon stage with Ukraine war and Uyghurs 're-education' supporters
  - 80+ authors call for China's Worldcon to be revoked
  - China Worldcon changes venue and date on which it won site selection vote
  - Record delay in China Worldcon releasing its first Progress Report
  - First China Worldcon Progress Report released
  - China Worldcon visa arrangements
  - Second China Worldcon Progress Report released
  - Some short-listed for the Hugo refuse to go China Worldcon's Hugo ceremony
  - China's Chengdu Worldcon has been held
  - China Worldcon's science programme is the smallest in decades
  - China Worldcon Business Meeting proposals controversial
  - China conned the Worldcon says Human Rights Foundation
  - Need to think of future beyond the 2023 China Worldcon
  - Hugo Awards physically damaged in transit
++++  World SF Society rule that countries eligible to host should meet certain freedom scores; there are a number of freedom and democracy indices that might be used.

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!
          There are several things to pick up and we will cover the salient points of the principal sections here in the order they appear in the report.
          Art Show.  They recommend using e-mail rather than a Google documents form. This is a most wise move as not everyone wants to set up an account with Google, so let Google have their personal data.
          Social Media.  Facebook was the most popular, followed by Twitter (now Musk's 'X'). The other platforms had less than half each of these two.
          The Venue.  The Telford Convention Centre could have held a larger convention. More about this in the Finance section below. (Not in the report was that is was a strictly cashless venue, and this needs to be flagged at the bid stage for those not liking digital.)
          Discord.  Half the convention signed up for this.
          Finances.  Their words: "Financially, the convention was a disaster, with a total shortfall of around £35,000" (US$44,450).  This was down to two factors. i) the high cost of the Telford Convention Centre (the most expensive ever in real-terms of any Eastercon to date, and ii) the low numbers attending compared to a usual recent Eastercon. This in no doubt was in part due to this year being a British Isles Worldcon venued year.
          Health Protection.  The large venue and low attendance meant that CoVID was not an issue. Approximately 20% of the convention goers were masked, which was lower than the organisers hoped.
          Hospitality.  The venue food was "a bit pricey". There were few low- and non-alcohol booze options: this was an issue. Holiday Inn Hotel food and drink seemed satisfactory. Some of the International hotel staff were not a as helpful as in the Holiday Inn and the Telford Convention Centre itself
          Membership.  There were 586 total members of which 388 were for all four days.  We (SF² Concatenation) separately ascertained that there were 480 physically attending: this compares with warm body attendance previous years of: around 830 (2023), 659 (2022); (2020/1 CoVID cancelled/virtual), 1,056 (2019) and 872 (2017)… (For information, the largest Eastercon was the 1984 Eastercon-Eurocon in Brighton with over 1,700 which benefited from it being a Eurocon as well as a well organised press operation.)
          Opening Hours.  Some attendees were reluctant (a few were confrontational) to leave by the end of the convention's venue hire period despite this being advertised beforehand.
          Programme.  The mixture of 45 minute items in 60 minute slots with 60 minute items in 90 minute slots was confusing for some panellists and attendees but allowed the to programme more. More attention needed to be paid to how many similar items there were, and scheduling similar items against each other. (Separately, we noted it was panel dominated with few talks and there was little science and no SF films (let alone rare-to-see art-house offerings, the continuation of a regrettable Eastercon trend in recent decades).)
          This will be a very useful document for Eastercon-runners and the committee are to be commended for its production.

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.
          Venue.  This was the Worldcon's third visit to the Scottish Event Campus (as it is now known) and for the first time there was security checking bags of those entering. It was not long before con-goers were advised not to joke with those searching bags as one fan had been banned from the venue by venue staff.  And as we noted in our editorial above, we previously warned that this was to be another overcrowded event (following the Dublin and Finland Worldcons) and there were repeated overcrowding warnings in the convention newsletter.  Apparently, even late arriving programme participants (mainly panellists) were prevented from entering rooms that the venue staff had deemed full.  The perception seemed to be that though there was an overcrowding problem there was less of a queue problem compared to Helsinki and Dublin, with staff there indicating when rooms were full, there was no need to queue.  Given recent crowding form, the current generation of European Worldcon organisers seriously need to get a grip and limit attendance numbers to venue carrying capacity: it is a bit of a bummer for those for whom the programme is a big Worldcon draw, to fork out a couple of thousand £/$/€ (registration, travel, hotel, consumables etc) only to discover you can't get into many programme items due to overcrowding.  Recent Worldcon organisers are not doing fandom any favours!  As for the rest of us, best learn their names for when considering attending future events.
          CoVID.  One side effect of the overcrowding was CoVID.  The convention did have a CoVID reporting channel on the con’s Discord server.  By the end of the convention, 129 (just shy of 2% of the con) had reported being infected.  However, given:  it can take as little as 3 and up to 10 days since infection before testing positive;  that not everyone signed up for the con's Discord;  or even that not all those registered would have actually reported their infection..,  it is very likely that this 2% figure of the convention is very much an under-estimate as to infections taking place at the event.
          Travel.  Compared to previous Glasgow Worldcons, the new rail station by the venue made it easier to connect with central Glasgow and its overflow hotels.
          The programme.  With just 11 talks (only 11! – around 1% of the programme), a rather sparse film programme (just film panel chat, no films screened) and 403 panels, this was very much a talking heads programme. With (other than panels on films) there being no film programme, and in terms of recent decades, it is increasingly looking like the 2010 Australian Worldcon film programme was a rare return to the Worldcon film programmes of the 1970 and '80s.  Indeed, Glasgow had the dubious achievement of being the first British Worldcon (there have been seven previously, starting with the 1957 Worldcon) to have no film screenings at all!  This was all the more odd as the 2023 Worldcon had called for more Hugo attention to independent art-house SF cinema (a motion for a new such Hugo category failed to be ratified at the business meeting this year): it would seem the current generation of Worldcon runners is not as cinematically literate as they are versed in SF in its written form.  Yet there is a hunger for SF film as Glasgow's poll with its 1,260 participants revealed with over 42% being supportive of independent SF films and as well as by the large number regularly nominating for the Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form Hugos over the years.  Worldcon organisers seem to be a considerably out of step with Worldcon attending fans and future Worldcon-runners might want to address this.
          There was though a welcome return, following last year's Worldcon, to a reasonably sized science programme (see the next item below) albeit, again, panel dominated.
          Publications.  The con's paperless experience – digital only programme schedule, newsletters, maps etc. – had only limited success.  With thousands of folk accessing these early in the morning the venue's wi-fi struggled (occasionally failing).  Also, there was the one-size-fits-all-attitude of the help desk.  Reported to us was an exchange when some fans asked for a physical (paper) copy of the venue map as the fans in question did not own smartphones – the help desk had just one paper copy. They were told to take a photo of the paper map and then print it out themselves.  A neat trick, if you don't own a smartphone with camera… The fans mused, were they meant to travel hundreds of miles home and print a copy themselves before returning hundreds of miles to the con?  Hardly the green option.  ;-)  Still, no stopping the greenwash.  Many convention reports and personal visit/trip coverage commented on the difficulties with the paperless policy: not one we have seen said the paperless publication policy was good let alone a success.
          As disturbing was the convention organisers' complete, and wilful (they had been asked about this a year before the event) disregard for the World SF Society (WSFS) rules that all no-show members (including supporting members) should be sent the convention publications.  This requirement to provide no-showers publications had previously been further clarified by a vote at the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017 that paper copies be sent. Given that there were some 2,000 Glasgow no shows, a significant number were affected.  While a PDF of the programme booklet was downloadable from the convention's website, there was no such option for the souvenir book: it was not on the convention's website during the con or even for a month after (up to our posting this news page).  This wilful disregard to the democratically determined WSFS rules contrasted markedly with that of those separate folk administering this year's Hugo Awards who commendably upheld the rules regarding the Awards in the face of a unashamed attempt to usurp them.  Conversely, the convention organisers felt they could pick and choose which rules to follow and which to ignore.  Having said that, WSFS is not challenging Worldcon organisers for such flagrant flouting of the rules.  There will no doubt be reasons for this but, whichever way you cut it, it is a failure of WSFS governance that renders motions passed at its business meetings unenforceable, hence somewhat meaningless.
          All the other usual Worldcon trappings fans like were there, including: a dealers room (what US fans call a hucksters hall), fan area and art show, with book signing sessions and meet the professional items in the mix.  The dealers hall noticeably ebbed ad flowed in the half-hour breaks between programme items and these breaks also saw lengthy loo queues.  There was a return to having a major prop exhibit at the con – old timers may remember the Star Wars fighter cockpit at a Brighton Worldcon – with two Batmobiles in the main concourse.  And then there were the evening parties with fans in various hotels and future Worldcon bids holding parties in one the main halls of the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) up to 8pm before migrating to hotels.  There were also various parties run by specialist British SF imprints of publishing houses, held at various sites away from the Worldcon (SEC) venue in the evenings for professionals, SF magazines and online genre SF sites.  Finally, and of course, there were the Hugo SF Achievement Awards.
          There was much socialising and meeting of old friends and acquaintances and, at the end of the day, the convention was enjoyable for nearly all (sadly and unavoidably not for those struck by CoVID) and a useful networking exercise for many.  Those first-timers (over 1,000 of the little over 7,000 participants on site were first-timers), unaware of how really great the Worldcon can be, seemed to think highly of the event (first-timer convention review here).  This is not to be disparaging of this Glasgow Worldcon, but there have been better.  For most, it was a proper get-together for the first time in a few years (due to the CoVID limitations of 2020 and 2021, and the con being in China in 2023) that really made the convention notable, and the Glasgow team are to be congratulated for making that happen.
          Summary.  Publication policy aside, the convention's basic nuts and bolts were ably organised and despite some fundamental flaws, the con-goers enjoyed themselves with much networking and socialising.  Folk had a good time.  As a party the 2024 Worldcon was a great success.
          There was too much going on to give full coverage here, on this news page, but we have a standalone con report elsewhere this issue by someone for whom Glasgow was their first Worldcon.  We hope to have a couple more standalone, illustrated convention reports next season.

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 science programme included the following space-related and cosmology items:  'Time-keeping on Mars';  'The Universe: Reality or Simulation?';  'The Science, Fiction, and Ethics of Terraforming';  'The Life Cycle of Stars';  'Vegetables in Space';  'Quantum In Space! Big Adventures for Small Satellites';  'Micro-to-Macro: Space Technologies at Extremes of Length-scale';  'Sustainable Space Exploration';  'Meet the Astronaut: Q&A Session for Children';  'This Starship Earth';  'Back to the Moon';  'Finding Uranus';  'From Antarctica to Space';  'Balloon Rockets';  'NASA's DART: The Spacecraft That Moved an Asteroid';  'Cosmic Odyssey – Thinking Beyond Earth';  'Gravitational Waves – What, How, Where, Why?';  'Low Earth Orbit Space Stations – What Does the Future Hold?';  'Settling the Solar System: Building a Space Society';  'Going Up - Space Elevators as Highways to the Stars';  'SKAO: Building the World's Largest Radio Telescope';  'The Awesome Scottish Space Sector';  'The Economics of Generation Starships'.
          And then there was the rest of science:  'The Future of Birth: Obstetrics and Science Fiction';  'Engineering Solutions to People Problems';  'Magnetism – the Force of the Future';  'Sustainability 1: Adapting to a Changing World';  'Fantastic Foods: What's On The Menu?';  'Climate Change and the End of the World';  'The Science Ceilidh'; 'Analytical Geochemistry and Sustainability';  'Where’s My Tricorder? Measurement Science in Fact and Fiction';  'Sustainability 2: Fuelling the Future';  'Learning from CoVID – An International Perspective';  'Posthuman Futures';  'Frankenstein 2.0: Life from a Bag of Chemicals';  'Science Fiction as a Tool to Increase STEM Uptake?';  'Serious Scientific Talk: The Science of Breakfast';  'The Science of Superheroes';  'Sustainability 5: The Great Worldcon Debate';  'Optical Forces: Some Fundamentals and Some Surprises'; 'An Apple for the Robot? The Future of Educational Technology';  'Chemistry in SF: Cavorite, Coaxium and Other Fictions';  'Sustainability 3: Feeding the Future';  'I Sing the Body Robotic – The Anatomy of Future Bodies';  'Ecological Futures';  'From Whence Cometh the Next Pandemic?';  'Has Science Ruined Science Fiction?';  'Reproductive Futures';  'The Eye – Vision for the Future';  'Sustainability 4: It’s Only the End of the World Again!';  'AI and Ethics - Do Androids Dream of Having Free Will?';  'The Hidden Complexity of Technology: Inside Raspberry Pi 5';  'Pointless Technology';  'Very Tall Tales from a SF Fan – Science Demonstration Lecture';  'The Mathematics of Games';  'How Your Cat Is Trying to Kill You';  'Anatomy of a Shoe';  'String Theory Made Easy';  'Bodily Futures';  'Futures of SeΧuality';  'E-bike Schemes or Superloops? The Future of Public Transportation';  and 'More Fiction Than Science'(Science in SF film).
++++  Last last year's Worldcon science programme here.

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…
          Proposal for Best Independent Film (feature and short) Hugo Award Category.  As we noted reporting last year's business meeting, this was likely to fail ratification this year due to the difficulty in defining what exactly is an independent studio and where is the diving line between them and bigger, 'less-independent' studios.  Glasgow helpfully conducted a non-binding ballot of its registrants in advance of the event so as 'to inform' the business meeting.  Some 1,260 Worldcon members took part in this ballot with 42.3% voting in favour of these new Hugo Award categories and 57.7% against.  There was surprise for some that the vote was so close; while no surprise for others – art-house films are among the most innovative (well, they don't follow a formulaic franchise) and thoughtful (their scripts are not vetted by a studio for commercial profitability/their makers aren't afraid of calling on their viewers to actually think a bit) and imaginative (independent studios are more free to think outside of the box).  SF fans who are cinematically literate are well aware of all this.  Indeed, there are many such who attend Worldcons, as the attendance of the three parallel film streams at the 2010 Worldcon, or even the packed rooms for the screenings of the limited number of art-house films screened at the last British-venued Worldcon, testify.  You may not pick up on this cinematic interest from the Hugo Award short-list which tends to always have mainstream franchise films dilute things, but the Awards' long-lists (announced after the Awards are presented) always have a few excellent films in the mix that did not get most of the Hugo voters' attention.  (So you can be sure that there were a good few disappointed souls that this year's Glasgow Worldcon had no film programme!)
          Notwithstanding all of this, the aforementioned impracticality – how can you precisely define what is an 'independent film' – in administering such proposed Hugo categories always made it likely that this proposal would fail to be ratified, and fail it did…
          The proposal to create an Asian Science Fiction Convention (ASFic) to be held every year a Worldcon is held outside of Asia (a kind of counterpart to the NASFic in N. America) failed.  There were many reasons for this failure including that the NASFic is really an artefact of Worldcon history for N. American fans who are less likely to want to travel to a Worldcon those years they are outside of that continent: historically, most Worldcons are held in N. America.  The other reason for this motion's failure to be ratified is that just a few short years ago an Asian Science Fiction Convention was created but soon failed due to a lack of interest.  That this was not known to the motion's proposers at the Chengdu Worldcon itself is revealing as to how unaware attending Chinese fans were of their own continent's SF scene…
          The proposal for minimum freedom/democracy index ranking for putative Worldcon hosting nations, which had we already had would have prevented the years of absurdity associated with the run up to, and delivery of, last year's Worldcon, was for some controversial (apparently China failing such a test and Taiwan passing is somehow racist against the Chinese), while for others it is an interesting solution.  And so the minimum democracy/freedom proposal was deferred to a newly created working party to consider. They will no doubt report back next year.
          +++++ Previous Glasgow Worldcon reporting included:
  - There's just one bid for the 2024 Worldcon – Great Britain
  - Britain's 2024 Worldcon bid has been formally launched
  - Glasgow is the proposed venue for Britain's 2024 Worldcon bid
  - The Glasgow bid is still on but overcrowding is not being addressed
  - Glasgow is still the sole bid for the 2024 Worldcon
  - Glasgow 2024 is now officially an unopposed Worldcon bid
  - Glasgow wins the site selection vote for the 2024 Worldcon
  - Fake 2022 and 2024 Worldcon merch on sale
  - What special Hugo Award category for 2024? (Editorial)
  - Glasgow Progress Report 1 now out
  - There's a need for WSFS governance motions at the 2024 business meeting. (Editorial)
  - Glasgow Progress Report 2 now out
  - Glasgow delays virtual membership price rise
  - Glasgow's one-year countdown announcement
  - Are Worldcons becoming unfannish: Glasgow ignores WSFS rules. (Editorial)
  - Glasgow replies to SMOF questionnaire
  - Glasgow releases disease mitigation policy
  - Glasgow has new guest – T. (Tendai) L. Huchu
  - Worldcon publications policy. (Standalone article)
  - WSFS desperately needs an overhaul at Glasgow 2024. (Editorial)
  - Scotland's Astronomer Royal Glasgow's virtual guest
  - Glasgow Progress Report 4 now out
  - Glasgow 2024 has new registration rates
  - Glasgow Chair effectively confirms abandoment of WSFS publication rules

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
          - Brisbane, Australia in 2025 - Now 2028
          - Seattle, WA, USA in 2025 (seated Worldcon) 82%
2026
          - Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2026 (civil rights concerns noted two years ago)
          - Cairo, Egypt in 2026 (replaces Jeddah above) 12%
          - Los Angeles in 2026, USA 82%
          - Orlando in 2026, USA 82%
          - Nice, France in 2026 - Bid folded
2027
          - Tel Aviv in 2027, Israel 74%
          - Montreal, Canada 83%
2028
          - Brisbane, Australia in 2028 84%
          - Kampala, Uganda in 2028 (all be there civil rights concerns*) 15%
2029
          - Dublin in 2029, Republic of Ireland 74%
2031
          - Texas in 2031, USA 54%
          The LGBT+ equality percentages come from File770 which in turn came from Tammy Coxon pointing out the Equaldex.com equality rankings. We added the UK score that was not included in the original File770 August 2022 posting.
*Uganda has recently passed an Anti-HomoseΧuality Bill that can mean life imprisonment for those that identify as gay and in certain circumstances the death penalty. Apparently there is a lot of blackmail with criminals threatening to report people as gay unless they are paid. Individuals or institutions which support or fund LGBTQAI+ rights’ activities or organisations, or publish, broadcast and distribute pro-gay media material and literature, also face prosecution and imprisonment. Some are arguing that the bill is unnecessary as its elements are already enshrined in Ugandan law.

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%
          - Aland, Finland (2025) (now a seated Eurocon) 80%
          - Berlin, Germany (2026) 79%
          - Libson, Portugal (2027) 76%
          - Zagreb, Croatia (2028) 52%
(For comparison, the UK's LGBT+ freedom percentage is 74%.)

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

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 UnstrungPoohniverse: 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.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

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.
          And the series also now has an official title – Alien: Earth.

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.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

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:
2023 UK Science Fiction / Fantasy (SF/F) book publishing sales increase of 25%
  – UK top 20 SF/F imprints top £38 million (US$47m) sales in 2023
  – UK domestic commercial publishing grew by 1.1% in the first half of 2023
  – UK total publishing grew to £6.9 billion (US$8.6bn) in 2022
  – China's SF/F paper publishing grows by 34.7% and digital 34.7% over 2021-2022
  – UK publishing saw a 5% growth in 2021
  – UK publishing sees small growth in 2020
  – UK book exports fell in 2020, but key market country exports increased

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.
++++  Related publishing news posted elsewhere on this site includes:
  – YouGov survey reveals the book habits of US N. Americans
  – UK Science Fiction / Fantasy (SF/F) book publishing saw sales increase of 25% in 2023
  – UK top 20 SF/F imprints top £38 million (US$47m) sales in 2023
  – UK publishing saw a 5% growth in 2021
  – UK publishing sees small growth in 2020
  – UK print continued to grow in 2019
  – China's SF/F paper publishing grows by 34.7% in a year.
  – UK publishing grew a little to £6 billion (US$7.44 bn) in 2018
  – British publishing grew in the year 2017/8
  – Authors' incomes still continue to decline
  – US authors' income falls
  – The UK backlist continues to buttress sales
  – British authors' income continues to decline

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.
          Related news concerning UK library decline following the post-2008 banking crisis previously covered elsewhere on this site includes:
  - 2018: British library closures continue
  - 2016: State of British libraries is now 'beyond urgent'
  - 2015: British library closures.
  - 2013: Select Report – Government disowns library decline
  - 2012: Select Report English library spend 'embarrassingly low'
  - 2012: Brent library closures – Residents take Council to court   - 2011: Annual library budget down 2.3%

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.
          The novel came out in the summer (2024) and apparently Steven Spielberg is considering adapting it for the big screen. Crichton's novel Jurassic Park was adapted by Steven. It was Spielberg’s highest-grossing film, and is now a global franchise worth more than US$6billion (£4.7bn).

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.
          Gail has now returned to Red Sonja with an original novel. We still have the same misbehaving, foul-mouthed (slightly thieving) badass but in prose, not just comics, which means we get more of Sonja.
          Red Sonja: Consumed is coming out from Orbit.  More info in forthcoming fantasy below.

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.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

Autumn 2024

Forthcoming SF Books

 

Fortress Sol by Stephen Baxter, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61462-7.
Humans have transformed the Solar System into a single, defensive fortress – a fortress built around ancient sacred geometries.  Elinor toils on the innermost planet, Mercury, exploited as a vast mine of metals and minerals. This is a life of enslavement, of hard physical labour. But now she has a baby son, Alfa.  But as it turns out, labourers are going to be in more demand when Alfa is ready to start work.  And as he grows, Alfa comes to suspect that Fortress Sol is built on lies, inside as well as outside.

World Walkers by Neal Asher, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03798-8.
He can jump between worlds. But can he save his own?  As a totalitarian Inspectorate tightens its grip, one man discovers the power to slip through the gaps and traverse alternate universes. World Walkers by Neal Asher is an exhilarating standalone novel set within the Owner universe.  Ottanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But after its Inspectorate experiments on him, Ottanger realizes the mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror – and he understands that he can finally flee his timeline.  Then Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved human, visiting his Earth from the far future. He’d engineered the original world-walking mutation, so those altered could escape the Committee’s nightmarish regime. Yet this only worked for a few, and millions continued to suffer. And Ottanger sees that the Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed.  However, the Fenris has drawn yet another threat to Ottanger’s Earth. With the power of its trillion linked minds, it craves world-walking biotech and will do anything to get it. As conflict looms at home, and war threatens the multiverse – the Fenris, Ottanger and his companions must prepare for a galaxy-altering battle.

The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August, Del Rey, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-152-9-93489-2.
When the home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All home knows is that they are the last ones left – and whatever came for the others will one day come for them.  Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals – anything left behind that might be useful to home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.  Now Scout, their brother and their sometimes fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most.

Minecraft: The Village by Max Brooks, Penguin, £7.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94713-5.
The final book in Max Brooks’s official Minecraft trilogy!  It details the story of two stranded heroes whose block-breaking expedition lands them squarely in the middle of a conflict which only they can resolve.

Deep Black by Miles Cameron, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61504-4.
Marca Nbaro had always dreamed of serving aboard the Greatships. They are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume – and value – of goods from City, all the way to tradepoint of the universe, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.Out in space, something is targeting the Greatships. Nbaro and her friends are close to locating their enemy, but they are running out of time – and their allies are running out of patience.

Doctor Who: Ruby Red (2024) Georgia Cook, BBC Books, £14.99 / Can$31.99 / US$20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-785-94899-2.
April 1242 and the Doctor and Ruby answer a distress cal sent from Medieval Russia. The signal's sender is an alien girl forced to take part in a barbaric conflict between the armies of Estonia and Novgorod on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus…

Bellevue by Robin Cook, Macmillan, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05097-0.
Twenty-four-year-old Michael “Mitt” Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly 300-year-old, iconic Bellevue hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. The pressure is on for this newly minted doctor, and to his advantage he’s always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical which gradually plays a progressive role, especially as one patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes. As he struggles to find out why these people are dying while simultaneously having to deal with the unreasonable demands of being first-year resident, things rapidly spiral out of control.

Mercy of the Gods by James S. A. Corey, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51779-7.
The start of a new trilogy from the authors (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) who were behind The Expanse novels that became a hit TV series. This is a space opera set in a future where humanity is threatened by the hive-mind species, the Carryx… (Click on the previous link for news of the trilogy.)

Eruption by Michael Crichton & James Patterson, Century, £22 / US$32, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90749-0.
This is based on an incomplete manuscript of Michael Crichton's discovered after his death. James Patterson has completed the novel.  A history-making eruption is about to destroy the Big Island of Hawaii. But a secret held for decades by the US military is far more terrifying than any volcano.  There may be a Spielberg cinematic adaptation in the offing(?).

Extremophile by Ian Green, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-54584-3.
In the hothouse of climate collapse London, punk biohackers are hired by eco-terrorists to rob, murder, and save the world - and hopefully play some tight shows on the way. Extremophile is a near-future biopunk thriller for fans of Neuromancer.  The year is 2043 and the world is split into Green, Blue, and Black – those fighting to stave the climate apocalypse, those willing to let the tides rise in the name of profit, and those facing the inevitability of failure. Parker is Green, Charlie is Black.  When a group of dissident Greens hire the pair to work on the science of an audacious experiment that could have profound consequences for all life on Earth, they must ask how far they are willing to go. Do they have the right to save the world? Is it even worth saving?

Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton, Tor, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-07370-6.
In a past age, humanity fled a dying Earth in massive ark ships. These searched the galaxy to find a new home. Then one fleet found Centauri, a dense cluster of stars teeming with habitable planets. Now, thousands of years later, Centauri’s settlers have evolved into advanced beings known as Celestials – and their great houses rule vast star systems.  As they vie for supremacy, Earth’s ark ships continue to arrive, and humans must serve these repressive masters. But is there a better life beyond the empire? Finn is a Centauri-born human and yearns for a brighter future. So when another ark ship arrives, Finn seizes the chance to become a Traveller.  These heroes explore the vast unknowns of distant space, dedicated to humanity’s survival. And they hope – one day – to find freedom.

On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs, Orbit, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52008-7-7.
Sequel to the Philip K. Dick Award winner These Burning Stars – the author’s space-opera debut.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-03-590957-5.
1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.  Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns. .This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.  This reprint is timed to coincide with the release of the Netflix TV series.  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

The Three-Body Problem manga box set by Cixin Liu, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £100, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-91242-1.
The 10-volume, 1,924-page graphic novel adaptation of the novel.

Doctor Who: Caged (2024) Una McCormack, BBC Books, £16.99 / Can$35.99 / US$22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-785-94918-0.
When the Doctor and Ruby arrive on a remote and nameless world, they meet a gentle local who is certain that she has been taken for study by creatures from the stars. The Doctor is concerned by mysterious meteors in the skies, while strange robotic creatures crowd the forests, watching everything and waiting for… what?

The Wilding by Ian McDonald, Gollancz, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61147-3.
A rewilding experiment brings back something much older – and much much wilder – than anyone could ever have imagined.  Strange things have been happening at Lough Carrow, a vast rewilding project on the site of a former commercial peat bog.  As Lisa and a group of children plan to spend the night in the wilding, the camp is attacked.  A teacher is dragged away. Lisa’s group is marooned in the wild.  It is night, the four remaining kids are terrifi ed, they need to leave, but the wilderness seems to be playing with time and distance and something is out there.  Something hungry and hunting…

Basilisk by Graham Masterton, Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90966-7.
Nathan Underhill is right out at the cutting edge of stem-cell research: attempting to recreate mythological creatures in order to cure medical conditions like Alzheimer's and MS.  After five years of research, however, his latest experiment fails, and he loses his funding. But when his wife Grace loses an elderly patient in unusual circumstances, Nathan suspects that somebody else has succeeded in breeding mythical hybrids…  The couple discover that Doctor Zauber, owner of the local care home, has brought to life one of the most dangerous creatures of medieval times: the basilisk, which could reputedly kill any living thing with a single stare.  After Grace narrowly escapes being killed and is put into a coma, Nathan is faced with an impossible dilemma: lose Grace for ever, or enter into an unholy alliance with Zauber to breed more mythological beasts, at the cost of many more human lives.

Petrified by Graham Masterton, Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-837-93198-9.
Braydon Harris and Suki, his little girl, are leaving her grandparent's house when a huge truck jack-knifes in front of their car. Suki is thrown from the vehicle and winds up in hospital suffering with terrible burns.  Luckily, cryptozoology professor Nathan Underhill is working on a perfect cure. Underhill breeds mythological beasts, and lately he's been working with the legendary phoenix – whose cells he believes might hold exceptional healing properties against burns.  Despite the treatment, Suki finds that the pain from the burns and this remedy only exacerbates a terrible nightmare she's had for years – one that's becoming realer by the minute, about scary things flying through the sky… and now they’re headed straight for her…

Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini, Tor, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00113-2.
First contact story.  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-91303-9.
Having travelled back in time, Constance Greene confronts Manhattan’s most dangerous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng – but she is betrayed and turned away empty-handed, incandescent with rage.  As Agent Pendergast focuses on assisting Constance in her fanatical quest for vengeance, his brother Diogenes unexpectedly offers to help. Diogenes establishes himself in Victorian-era New York's notorious Five Points slum, watching Leng’s every move, and awaiting his chance to strike.  But Constance strikes out on her own, to rescue her beloved siblings from a tragic fate and take savage retribution on Leng. Can she and Pendergast outwit the wily killer... or will he emerge triumphant once more?

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-20332-7.
Bio-tech has arrived. It could pave the way to a greater future for humanity. It could also tear the human race apart. Before the bio-terror attack, Darkome was a place where DIY genetics enthusiasts could communicate in peace. After the attack, they were pushed deep underground by a brutal government response. The perpetrators are on Darkome, and the biohacker community is simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Unfortunately, that community is the very thing David Adler needs. His daughter Inara is dying and, through Darkome, he might just be able to save her. But the bioterrorists are out there and David’s quest to save his daughter may put him right in their path.

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61768-0.
One afternoon, the Starship Sα Niro and the Starship Sβ Oubliette were in orbit around a black hole… by the end of the day, the crews of both starships were dead, victims of a single killer: Captain Alpha Raine.Raine claims he’s acting under the command of a voice emanating from the black hole: Mr Modo. No one believes him. But it becomes increasingly undeniable that there’s something inside that black hole… and it’s found a way out…  Billed by the publisher as Event Horizon meets Brave New World.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-509-83541-6.
Inheriting a family business is never easy – and this one includes a hidden volcano lair, minions, talking cats and supervillains.  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

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.
A war in the depths of space to determine the future of humanity, Vigilance concludes the journey of Captain Ellisa Shann.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01376-0.
When xeno-biologist Arton Daghdev is exiled to an alien planet, he journeys through a dangerous and hostile wilderness. Yet on his expedition, he uncovers lost alien ruins – and the mysterious builders who abandoned them.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04566-2.
Billed by the publisher as The Murderbot Diaries meets In the Lives of Puppets.  To fix the world they must first break it - further.  Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labour and service.  When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: they can run away.  Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.  Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming….

Nomad Land by Francesco Verso, Flame Tree Press, £12.95 /Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58926-1.
Following the creation of their community in The Roamers, the pulldogs leave Rome to shape a new challenging lifestyle: wandering around the world as neo-nomads to spread their solar-punk way of living and to embark on a never-ending mission to save endangered human cultures with nanites.

Solarpunk edited by Francesco Verso, Flame Tree Press, £16.99 / Can$34.99 / US$26.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-17935-2.
In this near-future anthology, Solarpunk explores the many ways individuals and resilient groups can fight gentrification, expropriation, abuse and loss of identity, starting within local communities, ultimately to embrace the whole world. Solarpunk traces a path, rough and tortuous, towards a change that is now perceived by many as a necessity. “Nobody will give us the future” – seem to say these short stories edited by Future Fictions’ Francesco Verso.

Spiral by Cameron Ward, Michael Joseph, £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-405-95819-6.
Ten hours into a routine flight from London to LA, a planes engines die and it goes into a spiral dive. You, and everybody onboard dies. Then you wake up and it is onehour before the crash… And the events repeat again and again…

Revenant-X by David Wellington, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52143-5.
The second novel, following Paradise-1, in the 'Red Space' series – a survival horror adventure in deep space, where the crew of the Artemis must uncover the fate of Earth’s first deep-space colony.

Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-62416-9.
Imagine the worst wedding you’ve ever been to. Then add aliensFrancie is a reluctant maid of honour, for several reasons. The wedding is being held in New Mexico.  In Roswell.  During the UFO festival. After a series of travel disasters the alien abduction is actually a high point of Francie’s day.  Bundled by an alien into an SUV, which she is forced to drive, what follows is a chaotic road trip, picking up other waifs and strays, hotwiring an RV, and desperately trying to work out what their alien captor actually wants…

The First Murder on Mars by Sam Wilson, Orion, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-40-919918-2.
This is the story of the first human born on Mars – she saw a better future and gave her life to build it. It is a story about a woman who grew up in the frontier of human existence and misses it every single day.It’s a story about a man who went missing, and the man who wants to find out what he knew. It’s a story about what makes us human.This is the story of the first murder on Mars.  Billed by the publisher as perfect for fans of The Martian and The Expanse.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

Autumn 2024

Forthcoming Fantasy Books

 

The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch, Orion, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22440-7.
The brand-new novella in 'Rivers of London' series. New York City .Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young – fop, flâneur and Englishman abroad – as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps. That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone – which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic and madness haunt the shadows…

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.
'The Book of the Seven Vizirs', 'The Tale of the Four Dervishes', the famous stories of Sinbad, and the tales of Scheherazade, are brought together as a magical thread of love and adventure, invoking the mysteries of the night and the mirages of the desert.

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.
Tales of Chinese mythology reflect the vast landscapes of Asia, where distant mountains, and long, winding rivers dominated the sight-lines of ancient peoples. History, religion, philosophy and mythology were intertwined in the observations of immortal tricksters and spirits who dwell in clouds dealing the magical acts of kindness and chaos.

Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-02738-5.
Romantasy.

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90863-9.
Navola is a city built on trade. And presiding over it all, the Regulai family. In just three generations they have risen far from their humble origins: now princes beg an invitation to dine at their table. The di Regulai say they are not political, but their wealth buys cities and topples kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power. Although not well suited for his role, he is inextricably tangled in fate’s net and his doubts can only summon ruin. In the shade of Navola’s colonnaded porticoes, his family’s enemies plot. In the shadows of its deep catacombs, assassins sharpen their stiletto knives. In the kingdoms of Cerulean Peninsula, princes and despots muster their armies. Davico’s only hope rests in a girl whose own family was destroyed by the di Regulai, and in a crystalline orb said to be the eye of a long-dead dragon.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00737-0.
When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her expected path, she may find that what we need isn’t always what we seek.

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52192-3.
Fantasy romance with dragons. The small town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbour and best friend Frank Ellis to join the Tanrian Marshals. Thankfully, patrolling the magical wilderness of Tanria is a mostly uneventful job these days, but when a footprint that can only be described as dragon-sized is discovered near the body of a dead marshall, the job suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. Quill, a handsome dracologist, is called in from the university to help them investigate, and for the first time since her husband died, Twyla finds herself the flattering focus of an appropriately-aged man’s attraction – something that seems to be bothering her long-time best friend, Frank. Why on Earth that should bother Frank, she doesn’t know – but her long-time partner sure doesn’t seem to care for Quill. As Twyla and Frank’s investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realise that her true soul-mate might just be the person who has lived next door all along…

October by Gregory Bastianelli, Flame Tree Press, £12.95 /Can$21.95 / US$16.95, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-787-58926-1.
An aged magician arrives in a small New England town in 1970 to recreate a magic trick that had tragic results years prior. When he accidentally opens a doorway to sinister evil just in time for the Halloween season, four boys on the cusp of becoming teenagers and a reclusive horror writer attempt to save the town from unimaginable horrors.

Januaries by Olivie Blake, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03957-9.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, the spirit tethered to a magical bridge rapidly approaches burnout - and craves her freedom. Elsewhere, Congress enacts a complex auditing system designed to un-waste your youth. We also follow a banished fairy, as she answers a Craigslist ad. And we meet a Victorian orphan, who gains literacy for her occult situationship. In another time and place, a multiverse assassin contemplates the one who got away.  Escape the slow trudge of mortality with these magical ruminations on life, death and the love (or revenge) that outlasts both. This collection also features modified fairy tales, contemporary heists, absurdist poetry and at least one set of actual wedding vows.  Januaries is a collection of new and existing short stories.

Masters of Death by Olivie Blake, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01154-4.
When Viola Marek, real estate agent and vampire, discovers the house she’s trying to sell is haunted, she enlists the help of a medium to exorcise the ghost. But Fox D’Mora is a fraud – even if he is the godson of Death.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brenan, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52249-4.
First adult fantasy from a YA author.  When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. In this fantasy world, she discovers she’s not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor’s tale.  So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they’re doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor’s fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04096-4.
The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent, Bramble, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04098-8.
Love is a sacrifice at the altar of power.  In the wake of the bloody tournament known as the Kejari, Oraya is now a prisoner in her own kingdom and grieving the only family she ever had. She’s left with only one certainty: she cannot trust anyone, least of all Raihn, the vampire who betrayed her.  The House of Night, too, is surrounded by enemies. Raihn’s own nobles are none too eager to accept a Turned king, especially one who was once a slave. And the House of Blood has dug their claws into the kingdom, threatening to tear it apart from the inside. When Raihn offers Oraya a secret alliance, taking the deal is her only chance at reclaiming her kingdom – and seeking her revenge against the lover who betrayed her. But to do so, she’ll need to harness an ancient power, intertwined with her father’s greatest secrets.  With enemies closing in on all sides, Oraya finds herself forced to choose between the bloody reality of seizing power – and the devastating love that could be her downfall.  Billed by the publisher as The Hunger Games with vampires.

Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent, Bramble, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05176-2.
A short, romantasy novel set in the same world as The Serpent and the Wings of Night. Six roses. Six vials of blood. Six visits to a vampire who could be her Salvation… or her damnation.  Lilith has been dying since the day she was born. But although she came to terms with her own imminent death long ago, the deaths of everyone she loves is an entirely different matter. As her town slowly withers in the clutches of a mysterious god-cursed illness, she takes matters into her own hands.  Desperate to find a cure, Lilith strikes a bargain with the only thing the gods hate even more than her village: a vampire, Vale. She offers him six roses in exchange for six vials of vampire blood – the only hope for her town’s salvation.  But what begins as a simple transaction gradually becomes something more. Lilith is faced with a terrifying realization: it’s dangerous to wander into the clutches of a vampire… and, in a place already suffering the wrath of a god, more dangerous still to fall in love with one.

The Songbird and the Heart of Stone by Carissa Broadbent, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05071-0.
Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire – her home, her humanity and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.  But when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she’s forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself.  Yet, Mische’s punishment may be the key to her salvation. In a secret meeting, her sun god commands her to help Asar in his mission, only to betray him… by killing the god of death.  Mische and Asar must travel the treacherous path to the underworld, facing trials, beasts and the vengeful ghosts of their pasts. Yet, most dangerous of all is the alluring call of the darkness – and her forbidden attraction to Asar, a burgeoning bond that risks invoking the wrath of gods.  As her betrayal looms, the underworld closes in and angry gods are growing restless. Mische will be forced to choose between the redemption of the sun or the damnation of the darkness.

The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04095-7.
Billed by the publisher as The Hunger Games with vampires.

Breaking Hel by Miles Cameron, Gollancz, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23257-0.
In an age of bronze and stone, when centaurs and dragons roamed the earth and Gods bickered in the heavens, ordinary lives were destroyed by the cruel, divine politics and games. Until a scribe, a warlord, a dancer and a child were set on a path to challenge the gods . . . and sparked a war that has encompassed the world…

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52525-9.
Kembral Thorne is spending a few hours away from her newborn, and she’s determined to enjoy the party no matter what. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She’s a member of the Guild of Hounds, after all, and she can’t help picking up the scent of trouble. She’s not the only one. Her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is on the prowl. They quickly identify what’s causing the mayhem: a mysterious grandfather clock that sends them down an Echo every time it chimes. In each strange new layer of reality, time resets and a sinister figure appears to perform a blood-soaked ritual. As Kem and Rika fall into increasingly macabre versions of their city, they’ll need to rely on their wits – and each other – to unravel the secret of the clock and save their city.

What if… Marc Spector was Host to Venom? by Mike Chen, Del Rey hrdbk, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91425-2.
The third in a multi-book What If series, based on the iconic comic ‘What If…?’ line.  With each instalment focused on a different twist on a superhero’s origin story, this original novel is centred on the two Marvel characters: Moon Knight and Venom.

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-00140-2.
A boy is born to rule a divided city. A girl is destined to return lost magic to the world. And a prince will betray his people to win a crown.

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01566-5.
Fantasy collection of shorts. Nineteen stories mostly related to fantasy, folklore, some horror, some with an SFnal riff. Contains the Hugo Award winning 'If you don't first succeed…' Two stories translated from Chinese original publication.

Elusive by Genevieve Cogman, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08377-4.
Elusive by Genevieve Cogman, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08379-8.
Revolutionary France is full of blood and bite as vampires plot for power. Eleanor, once a lowly English maid, is now a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, known for their daring deeds and rescuing aristocratic vampires from the guillotine.  This time, Eleanor and the League are investigating the disappearance of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the notorious French statesman and diplomat. But they soon uncover two vampire parties feuding for power and learn Talleyrand’s disappearance is part of a bigger, more dangerous scheme that will throw France into bloody chaos.

The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury, £9.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-67521-7.
An exquisitely illustrated Christmas short story.  Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees – and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.  One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst – and the path of her life is changed forever.

Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell, Quercus, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43702-7.
Dumas meets Deadpool in this swashbuckling fantasy. A mortally wounded magistrate faces his deadliest trial inside an ancient abbey where the monks are going mad and the gods themselves may be to blame. The thrilling prequel to the brand-new 'Court of Shadows' series.  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell, Quercus, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-787-47145-0.
On the run from a deadly swordswoman, Damelas Chademantaigne tricks his way into a company of actors to hide – but the theatre troupe has secrets of its own…

The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01821-5.
Billed by the publisher as The Night Circus meets The Greatest Showman as three magically gifted women try to build a circus – and home – in the ruins of the First World War. But great danger lies ahead…

A Curse of Crows by Lauren Dedroog, Gollancz, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61612-6.
Throughout her life Diana has worshipped and offered to the gods. But when she finds herself in a desperate situation and prays to the God of Malice, she becomes entangled in a dangerous deal.  Yet Keres isn’t the villain she’d been taught to avoid. It’s not Hell she should be wary of, but the realm of the gods, where thorns hide beneath spoken words and vows.  While Diana learns her place in this game of thorns, she finds herself tested again and again. But everyone has their limit…

Tales of a Monsterous Heart by Jennifer Delaney, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61598-3.
A love letter to the Brontë sisters; a gothic, dark fantasy story fi lled with magic, monsters and forbidden romance Katherine Woodrow is fey, and all she wants is to graduate. But when her position is threatened, she is left with only one option: accept a Mage Partnership with Lord Blackthorn.  Emrys Blackthorn is a riddle Kat is fearful of solving. What she does know is that she is irresistibly drawn to him… no matter how forbidden it might be. When dark magic returns, Kat and Emrys are thrown into a world that wishes nothing more than to see them burn.

Once a Monster: A reimagining of the legend of the Minotaur by Robert Dinsdale, Pan, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09739-9.
A retelling of the legend of the Minotaur; a tale of found family and friendship, loss and redemption.

Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy, Orbit, £19.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52398-9.
Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic. That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his long-time nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite – respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counter-spell, and fast. Chasing rumours of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws. To dissolve the curse, they’ll have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and – much to their horror – work together. Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.

Ice by Jacek Dukaj, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-786-69728-8.
A rare translation of a Polish fantasy.  An odyssey through a frozen realm, through political, criminal, scientific, philosophical and amorous intrigues to stand face-to-face with something utterly alien. 14th July 1924. It should be high summer but Warsaw is buried under feet of snow and Benyedikt, a dissolute young Polish mathematician, is about to be roused from his bed by two officials from Russia’s Ministry of Winter.  Russia and Europe are being devoured by the ever-westward march of a supernatural winter. Agriculture has collapsed and people have flocked to cities seeking protection from the deadly cold. But out there, on the ice, there is an incredible new wealth to be had. In winter’s wake, ‘black physics’ transmutes matter into strange and valuable forms, allowing new technologies, industries and economies to prosper.  At the heart of it all lies Siberia – the ‘Wild East’ – a magnet for all the political, religious and scientific fevers shaking the world. And that is where Benyedikt, once he has been woken, will be sent.  And he will have to decide whether to embrace the ice, or to destroy it…

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04232-6.
Every home needs a little magic…  Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people, and as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she hasn’t had to.  She and her assistant, Caz, a sentient spider plant, have spent most of the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s precious spellbooks, protecting the magic for the city’s elite. But a revolution is brewing and when the library goes up in flames, Kiela and Caz steal whatever books they can and flee to the faraway island where she grew up. But to her dismay, in addition to a nosy – and very handsome – neighbour, she finds the town in disarray.  The empire has slowly been draining power from the island, and now Kiela is determined to make things right. But opening up her own spellshop comes with its own risks – the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela starts to make a place for herself among the townspeople, she realizes she must break down the walls she has kept so high…

Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan, Hodderscape, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-72873-7
Action fantasy heist. A desperate thief, an impossible heist. Survive or shatter. Wherever she goes Cemmy's life is under threat, The Church would see her killed for having any magic, the Council of shades wants here dead for not having enough. When her mother falls ill, Cemmy has no choice but to turn thief. The catch? Cemmy will n have top work with Chase – beautiful, dangerous and full of secrets – to steal a powerful relic the Church has hidden within the deadly realm of shadows.

Mistress Of Lies by K. M. Enright, Orbit, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52470-2.
Romantic fantasy.  The daughter of a powerful but disgraced Bloodworker, Shan LeClaire has spent her entire life perfecting her blood magic, building her network of spies, and gathering every scrap of power she could. Now, to protect her brother, she assassinates their father and takes her place at the head of the family. And that is only the start of her revenge. Samuel Hutchinson is a bastard with a terrible gift. When he stumbles upon the first victim of a magical serial killer, he’s drawn into the world of magic and intrigue he’s worked so hard to avoid – and is pulled deeply into the ravenous and bloodthirsty court of the vampire king. Tasked by the Eternal King to discover the identity of the killer cutting a bloody swath through the city, Samuel, Shan and mysterious Royal Bloodworker Isaac find themselves growing ever closer to each other. But Shan’s plans are treacherous, and as she lures Samuel into her complicated web of desire, treason and vengeance, he must decide if the good of their nation is worth the cost of his soul.

Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi, Del Rey, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-929591.
Dina spends her days running her café in Bloomsbury, trying not to think about the curse that will hurt anyone who falls in love with her. But when she meets museumcurator Scott and the pair are made maid of honour and best man at their friends’ wedding, sparks begin to fly. Can Dina break the spell before it breaks both their hearts..?  Nadia El-Fassi is the pseudonym of Nadia Saward, who is a Commissioning Editor at Orbit Books UK.

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.
Horror stories about women, written by women. This anthology focuses on the strength of women faced with adversity. It explores many ways in which societal structures and personal action – including mistreatment of the environment and other people, particularly women – can reach a tipping point, creating unexpected changes, empowering women around the world. Fifteen interlaced stories and five poems from five authors, all women who were nominated for the 2021 HWA Bram Stoker Award.

Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon, Vintage, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-784-74555-4.
Eight mesmerising stories moving between Greek myth and the near-future to explore what, ultimately, makes us human. This retells classic myths such as Tithonus, Actaeon and The Minotaur and pairs these ancient tales with futuristic and dystopian stories.  The lover of a goddess, Tithonus is gifted eternal life, but without eternal youth he must stare into a future of endless old age. The myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child – and of the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals.  From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, from fear of the future to the cruel world of the English boarding school, Haddon showcases how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space-dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his powers of observation illuminate the thin line between human and animal.  Billed by the publisher as perfect for fans of Kazuo Ishiguro and Susanna Clarke.

Confounding Oaths by Alexis Hall, Gollancz, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60895-4.
Fantasy romance.  A nobleman must work with a dashing soldier to save his sister from a mystical bargain gone wrong, diving into a world of malicious fey, enigmatic cults and treacherous magic.

The Moonlight Market by Joanne Harris, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60475-8.
Follow a young photographer through the secret layers of London as he discovers an entire world captured in the negativesTom is a photographer and a dreamer, capturing snapshots of the city around him, always searching for something he knows is missing but can never quite grasp.As he develops the negatives he begins to glimpse the deeply magical, exquisitely hidden world. For deep in those negatives is the clue he needs to continue his search: a midnight, moonlit market in the secret heart of London, where everything is for sale and anything is possible . . . even true love.

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-06114-7.
Opal has spent her life obsessed with the mysterious Starling House – but when its reclusive heir offers her a job, she discovers there may be monsters lurking within.  This is just the start for this Gothic fairy tale…

A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire by Sarah Hawley, Gollancz, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60895-4.
Ben Rosewood never meant to be bound to a vampire, but he has to admit, there are some fang-tastic perks… Werewolf Ben Rosewood is happy with his life. But after drunkenly bidding on and winning a supposedly possessed crystal on eBay one night, he finds himself face to face with a beautiful yet angry vampire. Eleonore Bettencourt-Devereux is a rare breed – a vampire succubus. Thanks to an evil witch, she’s been stuck in a crystal since she was thirty. Eleonore and Ben soon realise they can help each other with both vengeful and less hostile needs. And why not have a little fun along the way?

A Reign of Rose: The Sacred Stones Book 3 by Markus Heitz, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43410-1.
Two kingdoms. One chance to save everything.  Arwen Valondale began life as no one, as nothing. But now she’s risen to unimaginable heights, done astonishing deeds, and fallen in love… with her arch-nemesis, the compelling Kane Ravenwood. Kane stands for everything Arwen hates: confusion, uncertainty, darkness and fear. And yet, she can’t seem to leave him behind – she’s journeyed to the highest peaks, the most distant lands, even the depths of the seas in her quest to save her people, and Kane has always been there with her.

The Return of the Dwarves Book 2 by Markus Heitz, Arcadia, £12.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42489-8.
The hero Tungdil Goldhand vanished years ago. Until the gem-carver Goïmron discovers Tungdil’s diary… and finds that the last entries are terrifyingly recent. Goimron gathers a small band of trusted companions, and they set off to find Tungdil and save Girdlegard from the mysterious Albae.  But the story’s only half-over. Brabandor’s on the trail of something extraordinary; Rodana is trying to change her fate, and Klaey remains an unknown quantity: his lust for power is unparalleled, and he’ll do anything to get it. And the most worrying question of all… will their quest change Goimron himself?

The Legacy of Arniston House by T. L. Huchu, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09777-1.
Ghoststalker Ropa Moyo learns a shocking truth about her family. But after she confronts her grandmother with the revelation, Gran is murdered – and, on top of dealing with her loss, Ropa is now the prime suspect.  Ropa races to uncover the real murderer, and soon finds a connection to an old magical cult. They are trying to take control of Scotland by resurrecting an army of the dead, led by a dark lord. She’ll have to use all her magic and hard-won skills in her biggest challenge yet.

Bittershore by V. V. James, Gollancz, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-473-22576-3.
The only thing stronger than a witch’s promise is a mother’s vengeance… Sarah loved and trusted no one in her close-knit coven more than her oldest friend, Abigail.  But when Abigail’s son is found dead at a party and Sarah’s daughter accused of murdering him, the pair are vilifi ed in the town’s witch hunt.  They fled to the storm-wracked coastal reserve of Bittershore for refuge, but now the past is catching up with them and the secrets they have kept not only from each other, but from the entire world, are set to be unleashed at last…

Goldfinch by Raven Kennedy, Michael Joseph, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-24169581-4.
Fantasy romance. The final in the 'Plated Prisoner' series.

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52506-8.
With power derived from the corpses of sorcerers, the Empire has brought peace to the world. But for some that peace is nothing more than a lie. Loran’s family were killed by the Imperials. Now she seeks revenge – but how can a lone swordswoman take down an Empire? Cain has survived in the Imperial City by staying one step ahead of the law. When a close friend is murdered, he vows to find those responsible – no matter the cost. Arienne is a sorcerer, condemned to power the Empire’s machines even in death. Yet when a long-dead necromancer speaks to her, she realises she can choose a different path – if she’s brave enough. When peace is a lie, there is power in truth – and as Loran, Cain, and Arienne pursue their own quests, any one of them could ignite the fire that brings the Empire down.

Brothersong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00225-2.
In the ruins of Caswell, Maine, Carter Bennett glimpsed the truth of what had been right in front of him the entire time. And then it was ripped away from him.  Desperate for answers, Carter takes to the road, leaving family and the safety of his pack behind. But therein lies the danger: wolves are pack animals, and the longer Carter is on his own, the more his mind slips toward the endless void of Omega insanity. Relentless, he pushes on, following the trail left by the feral wolf he tracks: Gavin, the son of Robert Livingstone. The half brother of Gordo Livingstone.  What Carter finds will change the course of the pack forever. Gavin’s history with the Bennett family goes back further than anyone knows. And it includes a secret kept hidden by Carter’s father, Thomas Bennett. But uncovering this knowledge will come at a price: for the sins of the fathers shall rest on the shoulders of their sons.

Heartsong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00223-8.
When Robbie Fontaine receives a critical mission from his Alpha, he seizes the chance to finally belong to a pack. But there are rumours of a traitor in their midst – including the wolf who may be his mate.

Ravensong by T. J. Klune, Tor, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00219-1.
After his pack betrayed him, Gordo swore to never again deal with wolves. But some ties are hard to sever, and the return of an old flame will test his resolve. This is the second book in the Green Creek series.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T. J. Klune, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-00937-4.
A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.  Arthur Parnassus has built a good life on the ashes of a bad one. He’s headmaster at an orphanage for magical children, on a peculiar island, assisted by love-of-his-life Linus Baker. And together, they’ll do anything to protect their extraordinary and powerful charges.  However, when Arthur is forced to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself fighting for those under his care. It’s also a fight for the better future that all magical people deserve. Then when a new magical child joins their island home, Arthur knows they’ve reached breaking point. The child finds power in calling himself a monster, a name Arthur has tried so hard to banish to protect his children. Challenged from within and without, their volatile family might grow stronger. Or everything Arthur loves could fall apart.

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 old world will die in flames…  Ireland, 1011 AD. Gormflaith, queen of Brian Boru, instructs their son in his heritage – but only on his mother’s side. For Gormflaith is a Fomorian, a magically skilled immortal. She intends to finally defeat her hated foes, the Descendants, and establish Fomorian control over Ireland. And if King Brian stands in her way... so much the worse for him.  Fódla, a Descendant hiding in the mortal world, must protect her magically powerful nephew from their leader, Tomas, who schemes to see the Descendants rule Ireland once more. Fódla must tread carefully, for she has broken a sacred rule of her kind: she is in love with a mortal.  As dark plots come to fruition, the only possible outcome is war. Ireland has bled red and often… but the coming clash will change her future forever.

The Scarlet Throne by Amy Leow, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52349-1.
Romantic fantasy.  Debut.  Talking cats, scheming demons and cut-throat priests….  A dark, heart-thumping political epic fantasy by debut author Amy Leow – full of scheming demons, morally grey heroines, talking cats and cut-throat priests, this delicious tale of power and corruption. Binsa is a ‘living goddess’, chosen by the gods to dispense both mercy and punishment from her place on the Scarlet Throne. But her reign hides a deadly secret. Rather than channelling the wisdom of an immortal deity, she harbours a demon. But now her priests are growing suspicious. When a new girl, Medha, is selected to take over her position, Binsa and her demon strike a deal: to magnify his power and help her wrest control from the priests, she will sacrifice human lives. She’ll do anything not to end up back on the streets, forgotten and alone. But how much of her humanity is she willing to trade in her quest for power? Deals with demons are rarely so simple.

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05039-0.
Her beauty hides a deadly purpose.  Xishi’s beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue – convinced that the best fate for a girl is to marry well and support her family. When Xishi draws the attention of the famous young military advisor Fanli, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to use her beauty as a weapon. One that could topple the rival neighbouring kingdom of Wu, improve the lives of her people, and avenge her sister’s murder. All she has to do is infiltrate the enemy palace as a spy, seduce their immoral king and weaken them from within.  Trained by Fanli in everything from classical instruments to concealing emotion, Xishi hones her beauty into the perfect blade. But she knows Fanli can see through every deception she masters, the attraction between them burning away any falsehoods.  Once inside the enemy palace, Xishi finds herself under the hungry gaze of the king’s advisors, while the king himself shows her great affection. Despite his gentleness, a brutality lurks; she knows she can never let her guard down.  But the higher Xishi climbs in the Wu court, the further she and Fanli have to fall – and if she is unmasked as a traitor, she will bring both kingdoms down.

The Wren in the Holly Library by K. A. Linde, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04485-6.
Romantasy. Set in an alternate day New York filled with monsters. She stole from a monster… now she must pay the price. Street thief Kierse should have known something wasn’t right. Now she’s trapped in a library – with a monster. She can’t run. She can’t hide. And this man – this being, filled with terrible power and darkness – is well within his rights to kill her.  By trespassing, Kierse has broken the fragile peace treaty between monsters and humans. But instead of killing her, Graves does the unexpected: he offers her a job. A chance to find out who she really is.  Kierse has always known she’s different. That she can do things a little better, a little faster. And there’s that sense she has when danger is only a breath away. But if the old tales are true, there are worse things in the world than monsters.

Seaborn by Michael Livingston, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-90575-1.
The seven houses of the matriarchal Seaborn have plied the seas of the Fair Isles for centuries, trading among the islands and fending off the attacks by the fearsome Bone Pirate.  But suddenly, out of the night sky, a common enemy appears – the Windborn, who come without warning to raid, burn, and kill.  Hoping to turn the tide, Shae - the Bone Pirate’s first mate - enacts a daring plan to fight her way aboard a Windborn vessel. The raid yields a prize - the airship’s captain who is, to Shae’s shock, a man.  Together with a reluctant heroine, Bela, they learn the truth of the shared history between the Windborn and the Seaborn. Now, these unlikely allies must make a desperate journey to confront the secrets of the past – and stop the dark magick at its source.

The Silverblood Promise by James Logan, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43278-7.
When Lukan discovers his father has been murdered, he vows to find his killers. Lukan’s search for answers leads him to the fabled merchant city of Saphrona, where even the truth comes with a deadly price attached.

The Half King by Melissa Landers, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50666-5.
In a world where birth order determines your fate, what if everything you believed about yourself was a lie?  Like all second-born daughters of the realm, Cerise Solon has never ventured beyond the temple grounds where she lives in service to the goddess. But unlike her peers, Cerise is a complete failure as an oracle. Her inability to foretell a single tragedy has brought shame upon her family, something she sees reflected in their eyes during their rare visits. Everything changes when the head seer offers Cerise an opportunity to serve the Half King – a young man who rules by day and turns to shadow at sunset.  As a firstborn son, the king bears his bloodline’s curse, destined to vanish completely upon his twenty-first birthday.  While searching for a way to restore him, Cerise finds a kindred spirit in the mysterious young ruler, and with his help discovers a startling revelation about herself that unlocks a powerful set of gifts. But the truth comes with a price. For she is no oracle, but instead the product of a union so forbidden its discovery would sentence her to death.

My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine, Century, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94542-1.
Amelia Collins is tired of constant questions about her nonexistent dating life, so she decides to get everyone off her back once and for all by finding someone – anyone – to pose as her date to a family wedding. If he’s annoying, or embarrassing, so much the better.  Coincidentally, Reginald Cleaves has centuries of experience at being rude, infuriatingly arrogant and a fashion eyesore. Amelia keeps running into this peculiar man by accident, and it takes less than five minutes for her to realise he’s perfect for her purposes. Because as handsome as Reggie is, no one could possibly want to marry him… right?  As Amelia and Reggie practise their fauxmance and more of Reggie’s centuries-old secrets come to light, Amelia is surprised to find her first impressions could not have been more wrong, and that Reggie’s bark might be worse than his bite…

Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M. Lin, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-01126-1.
In 1930s Shanghai, danger wears many faces…  Jingwen spends her nights as a showgirl at the Paramount, one of the most lavish clubs in Shanghai, competing ruthlessly to charm wealthy patrons. To cap off her shifts, she runs money for her grandmother, the exclusive surgeon to the most powerful gang in the city. A position her grandmother is pressuring her to inherit…  When a series of cabaret dancers are targeted—the attacker stealing their Faces – Jingwen fears she could be next. And as the faces of the dancers start appearing on wealthy foreign socialites, she realizes Shanghai's glittering mirage of carefree luxury comes at a terrible price.  Fighting not just for her own safety but that of the other dancers – women who have simultaneously been her bitterest rivals and only friends – Jingwen has no choice but to delve into the city's underworld. In this treacherous realm of tangled alliances and ancient grudges, silver-armed gangsters haunt every alley, foreign playboys broker deals in exclusive back rooms, and the power of gods is wielded and traded like yuan. Jingwen will have to become something far stranger and more dangerous than her grandmother ever imagined if she hopes to survive the forces waiting to sell Shanghai's bones.

The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04857-1.
Anahrod lives only for survival, forging her way through the harsh jungles of the Deep with her titan drake by her side. Even when an adventuring party saves her from capture by a local warlord, she is eager to return to her solitary life.  But this is no ordinary rescue. It’s Anahrod’s past catching up with her. These cunning misfits – and their frustratingly appealing dragonrider ringleader – intend to spirit her away to the sky cities, where they need her help to steal from a dragon’s hoard. There’s just one problem: the hoard in question belongs to the current regent, Neveranimas – and she wants Anahrod dead.

Whispers Most Foul by Emma MacDonald, Michael Joseph, hrdbk, £16.99, ISBN 978-0241-71524-6.
Welcome to Dunhollow Academy where magic and status mean the world and death lurks in every corridor. Rose prefers to keep her noes in books but when her classmates go missing, she finds she can see their ghosts. Worlds, Rose's latest ghostly vision is her greatest academic rival and the two must work together to uncover Dunhollow's deadly secret.

The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean, Gollancz, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-61656-0.
This is set in a zoo of mythical creatures.  With the world watching and the threat of poachers looming, Aila’s success is no longer a matter of keeping her job… She is the keeper of the phoenix, and the future of a species now rests on her shoulders.There’s just one thing she has to remember: she is also not alone. Against an epic fantasy backdrop, The Phoenix Keeper combines the fierce joy of cosy fantasy kings TJ Klune and Travis Baldree with the soul-restoring romance

A Rose By Any Other Name by Mary McMyne, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51772-8.
England, 1603. Rose Rushe’s passion for life runs deep – she laughs too loudly, meddles with astrology and music, and pays no heed to her mother’s warnings to guard her reputation. When Rose’s father dies and a noble accuses her and her best friend Cecely of witchcraft, they flee to London and make their way as occultists, secretly selling love charms and astrological advice. Their thriving underground business leads them to young noble Henry and playwright Will Shakespeare, and so begins a brief, tempestuous, and powerful romance – one filled with secret longings and deep betrayals.

Between Dragons And Their Wrath by David Madson, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-51824-4.
The old kingdom of Paicha has been split into city states, but there are those who seek to reunite the shattered realm – by force if necessary. Amidst the turmoil there are three who will find their destinies inextricably tangled. Tesha is a glassblower’s apprentice who becomes a tribute bride when her city is conquered by the south. In the enemy’s court, she is perfectly placed to sabotage them, but her heart has other plans. Naili is a laundress in the house of an eccentric alchemist who is awakening to strange new powers. When radicals approach her, she faces a choice between keeping her magic to herself and using it to change the world.

Goblin by Josh Malerman, Orion, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-398-71156-3.
Horror.  Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you’ll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, night-time is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin.

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, Tor, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08100-8.
It's a race against time as the magicians try to solve the Last Contract before their enemies. But to succeed, Lord Hawthorn must accept help from reluctant ally Alan Ross.

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03928-9.
Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage.  Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family’s wealth, something that Matti has been trying – and failing – to do for the past ten years. What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.  Luca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his home town. He didn’t plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible – and inconveniently handsome – wool merchant like Matti.  However, neither Matti’s business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what – or who – they seem. As the days to Matti’s wedding count down, the two of them become entangled in the intrigue and sabotage that have brought Matti’s house to the brink of ruin. And when Luca’s secrets threaten to drive a blade through their growing alliance, both Matti and Luca will have to answer the question: how many lies are you prepared to strip away when the truth could mean losing everything you want?

Bringer of Dust by J. M. Miro, Bloomsbury, £20 hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-65108-2.
1883. Agrigento, Sicily. A city of spires, broken hopes and bodies…  With the orsine destroyed, Cairndale lies in ruins, and Marlowe has vanished. His only chance of rescue lies in a second orsine which might not even exist. But when a body is discovered in the Cairndale, the Talents realize there is even more at stake than they'd feared. For a new drughr has arisen – and it is not alone. A malevolent figure, known as the Abbess, desires the dust for herself. And deep in the world of the dead, a terrible evil stirs - an evil which the corrupted dust just might hold the secret to reviving, or destroying life forever.  Against bone witches, mud glyphics, and a netherworldly house of twilight, the Talents must work together – if they are to have any hope of staving off the world of the dead, and saving their long-lost friend.

The Great When by Alan Moore, Bloomsbury, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-526-64322-3.
A dark and beguiling tour through the streets of a magical London by a legend of modern fantasy.  The year is 1949, the city London. Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, on an errand to retrieve rare books, Dennis discovers that one of them does not exist. It is a fictitious book, yet it is physically there in his hands nonetheless. How? It comes from the Great When, a dark and magical version of the city that is beyond time. There, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur. If Dennis does not take this book back to the other London, he will be killed.  So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, many of whom have their own nefarious intentions. Soon Dennis finds himself at the centre of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jo Fletcher Books, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41801-9.
See the title link for a stand alone review of the hardback.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42709-7.
Upon receiving an urgent plea for help from her beloved cousin, socialite Noemi Taboada rushes to her side at the remote manor High Place. But Noemi’s cousin may not be the only one in need of saving.

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43100-1.
Golden Age Hollywood – a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue. Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary temptress.  So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingénue, in the role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.  As Vera navigates the glitz and gilded glamour of her new city, Nancy follows silently behind, trying to take everything she believes Vera has been unfairly handed.  But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself. Consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Salome is a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.  And tragedy is waiting in the wings… for all three.

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jo Fletcher Books, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41806-4.
An intoxicating meld of Hollywood glamour, Mexican horror movies and ancient curses.  Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ‘90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she’s been in love with him since childhood.  Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives – even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.  Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse. But Montserrat and Tristán might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of films….  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

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 fifth volume in the ABC of Horror, a non-themed series of original stories, showcasing the very best short fiction the genre has to offer, and edited by Mark Morris.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, Vintage, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-787-30447-5.
A novel about the porous boundary between the real and shadow worlds. After losing his beloved as a teenager, the narrator finds his way to the Town, a mysterious place where he finds work as a Dream Reader in the library. Back in the real world as an adult he tries to recapture his time in the Town by taking a job as a librarian in a remote location in Fukushima province, where he takes over the job from a ghost. When a boy, M, who visits the library every day, vanishes, the boundaries between spatial and temporal realities, and between individuals, seems to have been breached.

Buried Deep by Naomi Novik, Del Rey, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91621-8.
An anthology of thirteen short stories, including two brand-new works.  From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the gothic, magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy, through the realms next door to Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories.  Though the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: wrestling with destiny, and the lengths some will go to find their own and fulfil its promise…

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, Virago, £19.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-349-01615-3.
Between Georgia and South Carolina is an island you won't find on any map. Only a single bridge connects it to the mainland. In Willow Springs people still honour their ancestors, who arrived as slaves back in the time of Sapphira Wade, the ‘true conjure woman’ who set them all free. It is said that Mama Day has inherited Sapphira’s power. She is a healer whose hands have delivered almost every soul on the island – and rumour has it that she can summon lightning storms. When Cocoa, her greatniece, returns to Willow Springs from New York, she brings her husband, George. But can Mama Day save them from the island’s darker powers?

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry, Orbit, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52032-2.
All they needed to break the world was a door, and someone to open it. 1921. Years after a botched spell lets loose a faerie into our world, killing hundreds, the study of faerie magic is banned. But for those who survived, their wounds cannot be fixed by bandages and bed rest. A magical curse requires a magical solution.  Clover is determined to find a way to save her brother, Matthew – one of the few survivors of the faerie attack. At Camford, England’s premier magical academy, she’s nobody, just a scholarship witch with no lineage and no connections. But when she catches the eye of golden boy Alden Lennox-Fontaine and his friends, doors that had been previously closed to her are flung open, and she finds herself enmeshed in the glittering and seductive world of the country’s magical aristocrats.  The summer she spends in Alden’s orbit leaves a fateful mark: months of joyous friendship and mutual study come crashing down when experiments go awry, and old secrets are unearthed. Years later, when the faerie seals break again, Clover knows it’s because of what they did. And she knows that she must seek the help of people she once called friends if there’s to be any hope of saving the world as they know it.

The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05401-5.
Romantasy.  After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an 'aunt' she’s never heard of, who promises to help, she reluctantly agrees to meet her – and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Her father might even still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures and taken to another realm – the one he is from.  Desperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods, fae and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae king, Tyghan. But what she doesn't know is that he's the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father – dead or alive…

The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen, Orbit, 9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52218-0.
A spine-tingling, queer gothic horror debut where two men are drawn into an otherworldly spiral, and a journey that will only end when they reach the darkest part of the human soul, billed by the publisher as perfect for fans of The Historian and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell as he mourns the death of his secret lover and the gnawing hunger inside him grows impossible to ignore. He must write his last testament before it is too late. It is a story steeped in history and myth – a journey from stone circles in Scotland, to the barren wilderness of Ukraine where otherworldly creatures stalk the night, ending in the icy peaks of Tibet and Mongolia, where an ancient evil stirs.

The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch, Del Rey, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-95152-1.
Nicholas ‘Coal’ Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned it into a PR facade.  Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.  But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush.  A situation that has disaster written all over it.  Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…  . and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.  It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other, and a marriage of convenience that no one wants, leading to one of the sweetest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

Blood on the Tide by Katee Robert, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94747-0.
Sail the high seas with this fantasy romance.

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09970-6.
Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Arashti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world – and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.  To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Haffar. They are far from happy to see him but, together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls; fence it; profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Arashti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who’s got his eyes on Avra’s every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; and the fact that they’re sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.  But if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings – and, more importantly, they’ll be legends.

What If… Loki Was Worthy? by Madeleine Roux, Penguin, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94658-9.
Loki and Valkyrie seek redemption in the first adventure of an epic new multiversal series that re-imagines the origins of iconic Marvel heroes.  So many worlds, so little time. Infinite possibilities, creating infinite realities. Long have we watched the trickster god sow chaos.  But… what if Loki saved Asgard from Tony Stark’s revenge?

A Tide of Black Steel by Anthony Ryan, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52280-7.
This is the start of a new blockbuster epic fantasy series with a Norse flavour. Billed by the publisher as perfect for fans of John Gwynne’s 'Bloodsworn' series.  The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. No one has dared question their rule. Until now. Whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path. Thera of the Blackspear, favoured servant of the Sister Queens, is ordered to uncover the truth. As Thera sails north, her reviled brother, Felnir, sets out on his own adventure. He hopes to find the Vault of the Altvar – the treasure room of the gods – and win the Sister Queens’ favour at his sister’s expense. Both siblings – along with a brilliant young scribe and a prisoner with a terrifying, primal power – will play a part in the coming storm. The Age of Wrath has begun.

This Cursed House by Del Sandeen, Michael Joseph, hrdbk, £18.99, ISBN 978-0-241-71451-5.
A young black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago, desperate to leave behind the spirits she has always been able to see.  She receives a job offer by the Dichon family in New Orleans.  But discovers that they are not what they seem to be. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all their eccentric clan…

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer, Arcadia, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43631-0.
A Narnia-inspired fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobe doors… you know, just in case.  Fifteen years ago, two boys went missing at a state park in West Virginia. Six months later, they mysteriously reappeared, unable to tell anyone where they had been.  Now adults, Jeremy is a missing persons investigator with an uncanny ability to find lost girls. Meanwhile, Rafe has become an artist unable to stop creating fantastical paintings and sculptures he shows to no one. He has no memory of the six months he spent missing.  When Emilie goes to Jeremy, seeking help for her older sister who was kidnapped eighteen years earlier, he recognizes her as the girl he’s been questing for all these years. Emilie is the lost princess of Shanandoah, and her sister is the queen of the fantasy world where he and Rafe spent those six magical months when they were missing.  But an old foe of Rafe’s is determined to keep the three from returning to Shanandoah. The only chance they have lies in Rafe’s ability to remember who he was. But there’s a very, very good reason he can’t.

Stay in the Light by A.M. Shine, Head of Zeus, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-54793-9.
After her terrifying experience at the hands of the Watchers, Mina has escaped to a remote Irish cottage. She obsessively researches the Watchers, desperate to protect humankind.  One day Mina discovers her elderly landlords have disappeared. But someone – something – is inhabiting their home. Knowing the Watchers' power is growing, Mina flees for her life... but when she reports her fears, she finds her sanity questioned.  Mina must convince staff at the psychiatric hospital where she is taken that her stories of malevolent beings are true – but that soon proves the least of her troubles...  This is billed by the publisher as a chilling modern twist on the Gothic horror novel.

Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone, Orbit, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52060-5.
It’s time to rage, drink and fight like a barbarian! Red Sonja, the iconic She-Devil with a Sword, will meet a new generation of readers in this fantasy by the comic book writer Gail Simone, making her novel-writing debut. Hot-headed, charismatic and always unapologetically herself, Red Sonja, the ferocious she-devil and barbarian of Hyrkania, has never concerned herself with the consequences of her actions. She’s pursued all her desires, from treasure, to drink, to the companionship of bedfellows. She’s fought those who deserve it (and sometimes those who didn’t). And she’s never looked back.  But when rumours start bubbling up from her homeland – rumours of unknown horrors emerging from the ground and pulling their unsuspecting victims to their deaths – she realises she may have to return to the country that abandoned her. Sonja must finally do the only thing that ever scared her: confront her past.

Primal Mirror by Nalini Singh, Gollancz, £16.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-60461-1.
Fantasy.  Auden Scott’s memories are terrifyingly blank. The only thing she knows for certain is that she must protect her unborn baby.Remi Denier is a man driven by the primal instinct to protect. Protect his pack, protect his allies . . . and protect the mysterious woman who has become a most unlikely neighbour. Then Auden asks Remi to help her shatter the wall of secrets that is the Scott bloodline. What they unearth will reveal a nightmare beyond imagination. This time, the battle is to the death.

The Gods Below by Andrea Stuart, Orbit, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-356-52067-4.
A new, epic fantasy series from Andrea Stewart, where gemstones contain magical power, and two sisters find themselves on opposite sides of a war between gods….  After a divine war shattered the world, humanity struck a pact with the god Kluehnn: in return for regular tribute of magical gems, Kluehnn would restore the world to its former glory. But the pact carries a heavy price. With each land restored, its people are physically altered – and not always for the better. When Hakara’s homeland is set to be restored, she flees for the border with her sister Rasha. Escaping into the neighbouring kingdom is the only way they can save their humanity. But tragedy strikes when they’re separated and Hakara is forced to go on alone. Taking on a mining job to survive, she discovers she’s able to channel the magical power of the gems she’s pulling from the earth. Soon she’s contacted by a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the God Pact, who want her to join their clandestine war against Kluehnn. Hakara refuses their advances, until they make a startling claim. They know where Rasha is. And they can help Hakara rescue her. But only if she joins them.

Endless Terrors by K. J. Sutton, Penguin, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-94487-5.
To protect the ones she loves, Fortuna has left everything behind.  She can’t let down her guard. She can’t rest. She can’t stop moving. Not if she doesn’t want her ever-growing abilities to be used as a catalyst for a monster’s entrance into the world.  Fortuna thought she knew death. She believed herself well acquainted with betrayal. But now she stumbles upon one more secret. One more answer to a question she’s been asking for over a decade.  One more truth that might shatter her completely.

The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennett, Witch by Melinda Taub, Jo Fletcher Books, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-42624-3.
A witchy reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the – according to her – much-maligned youngest Bennet sister, Lydia.  Miss Lydia Bennet may be the youngest, but what she lacks in maturity and responsibility, she more than makes up for in energy, fun – and magic.  But Lydia suffers from other concerns, as well: her best-loved sister Kitty is really a barn cat, and Wickham is every bit as wicked as the world believes him to be, but what else would you expect from a demon? And if you think Mr. Darcy was uptight about dancing etiquette, wait till you see how he reacts to witchcraft. Most of all, Lydia has yet to learn that when you’re a witch, promises have power.  Click on the title link for a standalone review.

Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ad Astra – Head of Zeus, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-03590152-4.
Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai, greatest of the Successor States, inheritor to the necromantic dominion that was the Moeribandi Empire and tomorrow’s frontline in the Palleseen’s relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world.  Loret is fresh off the boat, and just in time.  As Cohort-Invigilator of Correct Appreciation, Outreach department, she’s here as aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly – Gil to her friends – needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she must fight at midnight.  As a succession crisis looms, as a long-forgotten feat of necromantic engineering nears fruition, as pirate kings, lizard armies and demons gather, as old gods wane and new gods wax, sooner or later Gil and Loret will have to settle their ledger.  Just as well they are both very, very good with a blade…

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne, Tor, £20, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03099-6.
Reyna and Kianthe dream of opening a friendly book shop together, serving the very best tea and cakes. Worn wooden floors, plants on every table, firelight drifting between the rafters – all complemented by love and good company. But Reyna is an elite bodyguard to a vengeful queen, and Kianthe is the most powerful mage in existence. Leaving their lives behind seems… impossible. Yet they flee to Tawney, a town nestled in the icy peaks of dragoncountry. There, they open the bookstore they'd always wanted.  What follows is a tale of mishaps, mysteries, dragons, and a murderous queen throwing the realm’s biggest temper tantrum. And two women will discover what they mean to each other – and their world.

A Pirate's Life for Tea by Rebecca Thorne, Tor, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03109-2.
Queer pirates will discover if enemies actually can become lovers in this heart-warming sequel to Can't Spell Treason Without Tea. Billed by the publisher as for fans of Bookshops & Bonedust and Our Flag Means Death. Kianthe and Reyna are desperately hunting for dragon eggs to save their hometown. Unfortunately, in order to secure their prize, they must strike a deal with a local lord. The mission? To capture Serina, a notorious river pirate and scourge of the lord’s supply chains.  Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of the lord’sconstables. She is determined to capture the troublesome pirate - but it turns out that lawmaker and lawbreaker have a complicated history and it could jeopardize everything. As Kianthe and Reyna watch this relationship-wreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that the pair need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna’s favourite pastime. The dragon eggs may have to wait…

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Torzs, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-15943-1.
This follows a family tasked with guarding a trove of magical but deadly books, and the shadowy organisation that will do anything to get them back…  even murder.

A Dawn of Gods and Fury by K. A. Tucker, Penguin, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-804-95113-2.
Fates will collide in the final book in the 'Fate & Flame' series.

Fallen Gods by Rachel Van Dyken, Bramble, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05074-1.
Romantasy. Billed by the publisher as American Gods meets 365 Days.  Liv Olson has been drawn to Norse Mythology her entire life. After earning her degree and working as a curator at one of New York’s most prestigious museums, she gets an unexpected offer for her dream job in Norway – the same place her brother disappeared months ago – after a cryptic message about finding their long-lost father.  She finds herself surrounded by superstitious townspeople who refuse to even look at the water. Liv soon realizes that the small town of Vonn is nothing like it seems. Shops close before dark, and things she’s only read about seem to suddenly exist. To top it off, her new boss, Tristan, is insultingly mean and engagingly beautiful – and, as part of the job, she must live with him in his mansion.  As her life quickly unravels into chaos, she’s left wondering who’s pulling the strings in this mysterious place where nothing makes sense, yet everything feels familiar.  Her studies have always told her the gods are who you trust. But what happens when the man who’s destined to kill you… is your saviour?

The Doors of Midnight by R.R. Virdi, Gollancz, £18.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-473-23404-8.
All tales have a price. And every debt must be paid.I killed three men as a child and earned myself the name Bloodletter. Then I set fi re to the fabled Ashram. I’ve been a bird and robbed a merchant king of a ransom of gold. And I have crossed desert sands and cut-throat alleys to repay my debt. And most recently of all, I have killed a prince, though the stories say I have killed more than one.

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang, Del Rey, hrdbk, £16.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-93551-6.
Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia.  But there is always a cost.  Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fuelled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.  What neither Sciona nor her peers realise is that her taciturn assistant, Thomil, was once a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. And through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever – but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilisation in the balance?

We Shall Be Monsters by Alyssa Wees, Del Rey hrdbk, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90098-9.
A dark, lyrical fantasy blending the world of the Fae with the stories mothers tell to keep their daughters safe – and the consequences of disregarding the truth, no matter how sinister.  Gemma knows she’s not supposed to go into the woods – her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there – and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway.  Virginia understands her daughter’s defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her own mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash – Gemma’s father – into the form of a beast in the days before Gemma’s birth. And if Virginia cannot break the curse before her daughter turns fifteen, Ash will eat Virginia’s heart and Gemma will belong to the witch.  But everything changes when Gemma gets too close to the truth, and the witch steals Virginia away instead. Now it is up to Gemma to venture deep into Fae lands to try and rescue her mother and break the curse.

Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White, Del Rey, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-91768-0.
Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims.  But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire, and has spent her immortal life trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.  Her undead life takes an unexpected turn when, in twenty-first-century London, she meets another woman who is also yearning to break free from her past.  Lucy has long believed she would never love again. But their connection is threatened by forces from without.  Iris’s mother won’t let go of her without a fight, and Lucy’s past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl again.  Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?  Dracula changed her. Love will transform her... The author is a Bram Stoker Award winner.

Cross Bones by Tracy Whitwell, Pan, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-08758-1.
Tanz, the accidental medium who, with the help of the dead, has become an unwilling crime-solver.  There’s a queue at her door, and not all of them are living…  When Tanz, the accidental medium, is asked to help in the search for a missing woman, she finds herself at the Cross Bones Graveyard in London’s Southwark. From the outset it’s obvious there is unrest among the spirits who call this place their home, and now Tanz is right in the middle of it. What’s more, she now finds her ‘so-called gift’ is even stronger than it was and the dead really want to talk! Couple this with performing a play that could wreck her acting career for good, and a growing attraction to a police officer who happens to be a lot younger than her, and life is very complicated. But when the dead become restless Tanz can’t ignore them, and a mystery needs solving. So is she strong enough to come out the other side?

All the Devils by Catelyn Wilson, Michael Joseph, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-241-68394-1.
Dark academia meets horror. Mourning the sudden death of her sister, Andy knows she must come to terms with life without Violet. But on the day of her funeral, she discovers that the body in the casket is not Violet. Convinced her sister's elite boarding school is covering the truth she enrols at Ravenswood Academy… Soon she realises that the price she must pay for getting her sister back is darker and more dangerous than she could ever imagine.

Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43137-7.
Shapeshifter Shesheshen has made a fatal mistake for a monster: she’s fallen in love with a human. But human Homily has problems of her own: her family is out to kill the monster who has cursed them. A monster is named… Shesheshen.

Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood, Macmillan, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-04545-7.
Belladonna Blackthorn hasn’t lost her magical spark, but she hasn’t seen it in a while either. Balancing work at her beloved Lunar Books with protecting it from her toxic boss, all while concealing her witchcraft from those around her – Belle is burnt out. Perfecting the potential of her magic is the last thing on her mind.  But, when her thirtieth birthday brings a summons from her coven and a trial that tests her worthiness as a witch, Belle risks losing her magic for ever. With the month of October to fix things and signs that dark forces may be working against her, Belle will need all the help she can get – from the women in her life, from an unlikely mentor figure and even from an (infuriating) watchman who’s sworn to protect her…

The Coven by Harper L. Woods, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50625-2.
Billed by the publisher as The Vampire Diaries meets Shadow and Bone.  Willow Madizza never thought she’d accept a place at Hollow’s Grove University, the secret and prestigious institution where the best and brightest of her fellow witches learn to wield their magic.  But Willow has reasons for being at Hollow’s Grove beyond the education it offers. Raised to be a weapon against the Coven that presides over the University, she must find the bones of her ancestors in order to reclaim the magic that is her destiny. Her only obstacle is Alaric Grayson Thorne, the University’s beautiful and infuriating Headmaster. Gray is ruthless, manipulative, dangerous – he represents everything Willow has been taught to despise. But despite their mutual loathing, Gray understands Willow better than anyone, and he might just be the key to unlocking her full power…

The Cursed by Harper L. Woods, Transworld, £16.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-50627-6.
He was the deception waiting in the night; the truth I never saw coming. After a lifetime of manipulation, I finally learned the truth. I was his puppet — even if I never saw my strings.  Even knowing how deep his betrayal runs, I can’t shake the undeniable connection between Gray and I — the way a single glance from him sets my soul on fire. We are not the same. We’re enemies, poised to battle for the future of the very thing I’d wanted to destroy.  With the Covenant gone, the revenge I thought I wanted is no longer my priority. The witches that remain played no role in my aunt’s death, and the only person standing in the way of righting those wrongs is the very man determined to keep me in his bed.  But the remaining members of the Coven will never forgive me for the role I played in their demise and subjugation, and the worst part of all is that I can’t even blame them for it. I’d been naive, believing my own delusions of grandeur when destiny clearly had other plans for me. Plans that had been set in motion centuries before my birth. But even that had been a lie, and now it is my duty to do everything in my power to undo it.

The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young, Quercus, £9.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43365-4.
June Farrow has been waiting for fate to find her. And after her grandmother's death, a series of clues lead June to a mysterious door. Upon crossing the threshold, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but entangle her fate and her heart in a star-crossed love.

 

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Autumn 2024

Forthcoming Non-Fiction SF &
Popular Science Books

 

The Greatest Nobodies of History by Adrian Bliss, Century, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90745-2.
Was Caesar really kidnapped by pirates? Who ate the last dodo? Did anything even happen in the Dark Ages?  For centuries, the world’s smartest minds have pondered these big questions. And they were all wrong (perhaps?). Now for the first time, world-leading (allegedly) historian Adrian Bliss has gathered together the real story of humanity’s defining moments as recorded by history’s forgotten heroes. Featuring hitherto undocumented accounts from Ancient Greece to the frontlines of the Great Emu War and everything in between, this is history as you’ve never seen it before.

The Human Body by Sarah Brewer, Greenfinch, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43840-6.
The author is a clinician.  A spectacular visual explanation of the human body and how it works, using stunning CGI images.  Over 350 cutting-edge anatomical images depict the body in extraordinary detail, from exceptional views of the heart, liver, and lungs, to meticulous cross sections of the eye and other sense organs to a strikingly intricate degree.

An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets by Tim Brookes, Quercus, £30, pbk, ISBN 978-1-529-40824-9.
A global exploration of writing systems that are vanishing, and the stories and cultures they carry with them.  When a culture is forced to abandon its traditional script, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people is lost.  This atlas tells the story of these vanishing writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them. From the holy alphabets of the Middle East to newly created African alphabets: this book offers glimpses of worlds unknown to us and ways of saving them from vanishing entirely.

Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte, Greenfinch, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-438390-0.
From the fearsome Tyrannosaurus to the staggeringly huge sauropods Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, Steve Brusatte comprehensively describes each species–here they lived, what they looked like, what they ate, how they lived, fought and died–to provide a spectacular overview of one of the greatest stories ever told: the origin, evolution, and demise of the dinosaurs. Over 170 computer-generated reconstructions based on the latest research and technology, show these animals in stunning detail like never before.  The author is a palaeontologist who acted as consultant on the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs.

Pub Signs by Arthur Chappell, Amberley Publishing, £14.71, pbk, ISBN 978-1-398-11572-9.
SF book orientated conventions in Great Britain are commonly associated with beer and many local SF groups, from the London SF Circle and Birmingham SF to Reading SF and the Northumberland Heath SF Society, meet in pubs. So a book about pub signs is not entirely genre-irrelevant. Many inn names and signs are quite literal. If you hear of a pub called The Dog and Duck you might expect to see a sign depicting a dog and duck – but sometimes the meaning is less obvious. Is The Black Bull really a farmer’s bull? Is The Old Cock really agricultural? Was there a Blind Beggar in Bethnal Green? Whether you quaff the ale or just want to admire a beautiful outdoor art gallery that covers the whole of the country, this is the book for you. Be warned, the signs can be as intoxicating as the alcohol. You may find a whole new exciting hobby here.  Expect the unexpected. The truth is out there…  This is Arthur's second pub sign book. His first was devoted to pubs whose names relate to science fiction: Watch The Signs! Watch The Signs! from Shoreline of Infinity, ISBN 978-1-999-33310-1.

Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe by Harry Cliff, Picador, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09286-8.
An accessible account of the latest as yet unexplained phenomena of the universe that are new to science, space oddities that question science’s picture of the universe and could transform our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality.  Something strange is going on in the cosmos. Scientists are uncovering a catalogue of weird phenomena that simply can’t be explained by our long-established theories of the universe. Particles with unbelievable energies are bursting from beneath the Antarctic ice. Unknown forces seem to be tugging on the basic building blocks of matter. Stars are flying away from us far faster than anyone can explain.  After decades of fruitless searching, could we finally be catching glimpses of a profound new view of our physical world? Or are we being fooled by cruel tricks of the data? The author is a particle physicist based at the University of Cambridge and carries out research with the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins, Head of Zeus, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-804-54808-0.
An exploration of the power of DNA and what it can reveal about the deepest patterns of evolution.  In the future, a zoologist presented with an unknown animal will be able to read its body and its genes as detailed descriptions of the world its ancestors inhabited. This ‘book of the dead’ would uncover the remarkable yet often similar ways in which animals have overcome obstacles and adapted to their environments. What biologists call ‘convergent evolution’, the way in which species separated by vast stretches of time have evolved surprisingly recognisable forms and functions, is one of the most powerful and least understood forces driving life on Earth.

After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon by Greg Eghigian, Oxford University Press, £22.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-190-86987-8.
A comprehensive account of the stories, the people, and the strange events that went into making the fascination with UFOs and aliens a worldwide phenomenon among believers, sceptics, and the simply curious.

British SF Conventions Volume 2: 1952-1957 edited by Rob Hansen, Ansible Editions, £12.50, pbk, ISBN 978-1-916-50824-8.
This is chronologically the second volume in Rob Hansen’s history of the early UK conventions, though the fourth to be published. As in other such fan-historical compilations, the story is told in the participants’ and observers’ own words, with explanatory and bridging commentary by Rob Hansen himself. 1952-1957 was a particularly lively time for British conventions, with wild parties, zap-gun (water pistol) battles, tour-de-force auctioneering performances by E. C. (Ted) Tubb and much witty reporting by Vin¢ Clarke, Chuck Harris, Walt Willis and others.

Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus by John Haywood, Head of Zeus, £30, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-80-110990-1.
A history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic Ocean, a story that begins with the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge some 200 million years ago and ends with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century. John Haywood argues that the pre-Columbian history of the Atlantic is the story of how Europeans learned to master the oceans. It is, therefore, key to understanding why it was Europeans, and not any of the world’s other seafaring peoples, who ‘discovered’ the world. Informed by the author’s extensive travels in and around the Atlantic Ocean, making landfall at locations as diverse as Vinland, Greenland, the Faroes and the Cape Verde Islands, and populated by a heterogeneous and multi-ethnic cast of seafarers, fishermen, merchants and dreamers, Ocean is an in-depth history of a neglected subject, fusing geology, geography, mythology, cosmology, maritime technologies and the early history of exploration to narrate the story.

Saints: A new legendary of heroes, humans and magic by Amy Jeffs, Riverrun, £30, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-41661-9.
Saints’ legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes’ suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.  In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on ‘official’ lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends’ heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).

Designing Terry Pratchett’s: Discworld by Paul Kidby, Transworld, £30, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-857-52948-0.
This shines a light on the influences and inspirations behind some of the Discworld’s most iconic imagery, the collaboration between author and artist, and shows how real-world art, music, and culture fed into and became part of the world of this beloved, internationally bestselling series. The compiler started working with Terry in 1993 and has designed the Discworld book jackets since 2002 following the death of artist Josh Kirby.

The Long History of the Future: Why tomorrow's technology still isn't here by Nicole Kobie, Bloomsbury, £18.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-399-40310-8.
We love to imagine dramatic future technology, but why is it always just around the corner and never a reality?  For decades we’ve dreamt about a sci-fi utopia, from flying cars and bionic humans to hoverboards. And why not? Building a better world is a worthy dream, and given the pace of technological change, nothing seems impossible anymore. But why are these innovations always out of reach?  Delving into the remarkable history of technology, The Long History of the Future also looks at what lies ahead, providing insight into how technology might realistically evolve.  You may never be able to buy a fully driverless car, but automated braking and steering could slash collision rates. Smart cities won’t perfect city life, but they could help bins be emptied on time. Hyperloops may never arrive, but superfast trains could fill the gap.  Looking to the future, Nicole Kobie demonstrates how despite our belief that current technology is the best it could ever be, there is much to look forward to.

Enchanted CreaturesOur Monsters and Their Meanings by Natalie Lawrence, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-474-61902-8.
An exploration of the monstrous creatures we have created, and what they can tell us about who we are.  A history of humanity without a history of our imaginations is only a partial one… We have always made and destroyed monsters. They reveal our fears and anxieties. They give form to what we don’t know or don’t understand, our inner demons and irrational terrors. Understanding our monsters allows us to understand ourselves. Enchanted Creatures delves into the variety of monstrous creatures we have created over 15,000 years of history: from Palaeolithic cave carvings to hybrid snake-women to deep-sea leviathans.

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About The End of the World by Dorian Lynskey, Picador, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-09593-7.
An exploration of one of the central concerns of our times: fantasies and nightmares of the end of the world, from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to the Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go.  Human beings have been imagining the end of the world from the Book of Revelation to Avengers: The Age of Ultron. Every generation imagines that its visions of the end times are new.  The author investigates our fantasies of the end, across both high and popular culture, from the Reformation to the present.

Wizurdle: 100 fiendishly fantastical puzzles involving dragons, magic, swords and spells by Gareth Moore & Laura Jayne Ayres, Pan, £14.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05587-6.
Pit your wits against dangerous dragons, deceitful sorcerers, malevolent witches and greedy goblins in this fantastically clever collection of 100 original puzzles.  In Fable you will join Miralda and Orien on their epic quest as they journey to the fabled kingdom of Ellamir, and attempt to take back what's rightfully theirs.  Along the way, you'll be dodging hostile weapon-forgers by moonlight, navigating mystical mazes, cracking cryptic encantations and much more besides. These brain-teasers include logic, word and number puzzles.

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that will Change the World by Parmy Olson, Macmillan, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-03822-0.
It took Facebook four years to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, did it in two months. The simple text box was unlike anything experienced before. It could craft poems, write screenplays or letters of condolence, and tell jokes. It told one writer that it was in love with him and another that it had spied on Microsoft’s programmers through their webcams. But this is just the beginning. Things are going to get much, much worse as Google and Microsoft compete to monetize this rapidly evolving technology.  The danger isn’t that humanity is going to be eliminated as in Terminator or The Matrix. No, the danger is that these untested automations will undermine our way of life more insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation.  It was never meant to be this way. The founders of the two companies behind the most advanced AIs in existence – San Francisco-based OpenAI and London-based DeepMind – started their journeys determined to solve humanity’s greatest problems. But they couldn’t develop their technologies without huge amounts of money, and that much money comes with obligations – the kind that Google and Microsoft plan to make back a hundred-fold.  Supremacy is the untold, behind-the-scenes story of the battle between these two AI companies, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the dangerous direction that they’re now going in. It's a story of manipulation, exploitation, secrecy and perhaps the greatest invention in technological history - but, above all, it's a story of ruthless, relentless human progress and how it will impact all of us for years to come.

Harry Potter: The Official Book of Crochet Amigurumi by Jody Revenson & Juli Anne, Greenfinch, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-44087-4.
A comprehensive, officially licensed guide to crocheting amigurumi from the Wizarding World, this book includes designs for every skill level and a wide range of stitches and techniques featuring yarn expertly matched to the colours used in the films. Also included are behind-the-scenes facts and quotes and stills from the films.

The Myths of Geography: Eight ways we get the world wrong by Paul Richardson, The Bridge Street Press, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-0-349-13631-8.
Our maps may no longer by stalked by dragons and monsters, but our perceptions of the world are still shaped by geographic myths. Myths like Europe being the centre of the world. Or that borders deter rather than encourage migration. Or that Russia under Putin has always been aggressive to its neighbours. In his punchy and authoritative new book, Paul Richardson challenges recent popular accounts of geographical determinism and shows that how we see the world represented often isn't how it really is – that the map is not the territory. Along the way we visit some remarkable places: Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park, where you can swim between two continents; Bir Tawil in North Africa, and the direct train line set up in 2017 between Yiwu in east China and Barking in east London…

Artificial Intelligence: 10 Things You Should Know by Tim Rocktäschel, Seven Dials, £10.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-62652-1.
Discover the ten things we all should know about artifi cial intelligence in this compelling collection of short essays.  In ten short and informative essays, Professor Tim Rocktäschel reveals everything we need to know about artificial intelligence. From what the future holds for AI and why it continues to improve with more data, to how superhuman AI is attainable and why we still have to fold our own laundry, discover all of this and much more! Artificial Intelligence: 10 Things You Should Know is a guide to the most important area of technology today.

The Science Museum Puzzle Book by The Science Museum, Seven Dials, £14.99, trdpbk, ISBN 978-1-399-62389-6.
Solve over 100 puzzles and journey into space with the fi rst official puzzle book from the Science Museum. Prepare to lift off to a world of knowledge and mystery with your passport to a thrilling exploration of space. Venture into the heart of scientific wonders as you traverse through exhilarating puzzles inspired by the exhibits of the Science Museum on your very own adventure. Learn about the history of space exploration and the pioneers who led us there; embark on the astronaut training program; engineer your own rocket and blast off to explore other planets and make your own discoveries.

The Lewis Carroll Puzzle Book by Brian Sibley & with art by John Tenniel, Macmillan, £14.99, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-035-05735-1.
Lewis Carroll was a mathematician who loved puzzles of all kinds, invented the word ladder, delighted in acrostics and riddles and posed twisty maths and logic questions. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass he used mathematical logic when creating his whimsical world - and for nearly 160 years children (and adults) have delighted in his clever creation.  In this celebratory collection of puzzles, Chair of the Lewis Carroll Society, Brian Sibley, uses his expert knowledge to take readers inside the inimitable mind of Carroll with a beautiful introduction and annotations throughout.  Mind-bending and utterly charming, the puzzles and games include delights such as Doublets (word ladders) and Syzygies (a more elaborate form of the word ladder), Mirror Writing, Arithmetical Croquet and many more Carroll classics. Enough to keep even the most seasoned of puzzlers entertained for hours. As well as being beautifully designed with full colour illustrations from Carroll’s original and iconic illustrator, John Tenniel, a top mathematician and Carroll enthusiast will also provide explanations for the logic underpinning the games and will specially create new puzzles in the style of Lewis Carroll.

How Herbs Healed The World: And Other Stories of Remarkable Plants by Connor Smith, Greenfinch, £22, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43053-0.
Herbs are wonderful things. Without them so much would not be possible. With the advance of science over the last two hundred years these once mystical plants have changed and saved countless lives, vastly improving our standard of living while providing us all with a much richer, healthier diet. Today, we take for granted a world full of life-saving drugs, luxury cosmetics and exotic foods.  How Herbs Healed the World tells the origin stories of remarkable herbs and their impact on our lives: revealing how poisons such as deadly nightshade were deployed to dispatch opponents in ancient Rome but are a vital ingredient in modern medicine, or how herbs such as yarrow are still being used to treat wounds today, just as they were thousands of years ago.  The author is the head of Europe’s largest rock garden at the Utrecht University Botanic Gardens in The Netherlands.

J. R. R. Tolkien… A Very Short Introduction by Matthew Townend, oxford University Press , £8.99, pbk, ISBN 978-0-192-88204-2.
An accessible and authoritative guide to Tolkien’s works, and it places The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the context of his full body of writings.

Harry Potter: Official Wizarding World Cookbook by Sarah Walker Caron & Jody Revenson, Greenfinch, £25, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-43503-0.
Spellbinding meals from New York to Hogwarts and beyond! Create a scrumptious feast inspired by the Wizarding World with more than 80 Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts-themed recipes. With recipes ranging from ‘Hogwarts Start of Term Feast’ to ‘Queenie’s Apple Strudel’, as well as stunning full colour photography and behind-the-scenes facts from the world-famous franchise, this cookbook offers step-by-step instructions on creating a magical, memorable feast.

The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet by Robert Zubrin, Penguin, £10.99, pbk, ISBN 978-1-802-06700-2/
Within a few years, humans will be able to voyage to Mars. SpaceX is at the forefront of companies already building fleets of spaceships to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America. We will settle the red planet, transforming its raw materials into resources and tackling the challenges that await us, creating a new frontier for humankind.  This explains how populous Martian city states will emerge, producing their own air, water, food, power and more. How they must be beautiful to attract settlers, and what that might look like. How the primary exports are unlikely to be material goods but intellectual products. Zubrin even predicts the red planet’s customs, social relations and government that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw talented Earth immigrants.

 

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Autumn 2024

General Science News

 

The shortlist fo the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize has been released.  Shortlisted were:
  - Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
  - Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World by Tom Chivers
  - Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy by Kashmir Hill
  - The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction by Gísli Palsson
  - Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan
  - A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.
          The winner of this year’s Prize will be revealed at a ceremony at the Royal Society on 24 October, where he or she will be presented with a cheque for £25,000 (US$31,750). Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive a cheque for £2,500.

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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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.)
++++ Related news previously covered elsewhere on this site includes:
  - Neanderthal genomes reveal family life and partnering customs
  - Denisovan, early humans, colonised more of Asia than previously thought
  - New estimate for oldest Homo sapiens
  - An ancestor species to Neanderthals and archaic human species in Europe and Asia has been discovered
  - An cousin species to Neanderthals and modern human species has been discovered in China
  - How humans eat meat before fire has now been revealed
  - Mouth bacteria reveal ancient, humans had a cooked starch diet
  - Denisovan and Neanderthal Y chromosomes have been sequenced
  - Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged between 381,000 and 473,000 years ago
  - Modern humans on Flores exhibit dwarfing genes
  - Modern humans had seΧ with Neanderthals 100,000 years ago
  - Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA found in modern Icelander genomes
  - New early human species found - Homo luzonensis
  - Genomes show modern humans first left Africa thousands of years earlier
  - Modern humans diverged from primitive humans between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago
  - Iηcest abounds among Neolithic Irish ruling classes genomic research reveals
  - Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans
  - Early Britons had dark skin and blue eyes ancient DNA reveals
  - First stone age tools now 71,000 years not 40,000 years ago
  - First humans in Australia arrived 10,000 years earlier than thought

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.)
++++ Related news previously covered elsewhere on this site includes:
  - Modern humans on Flores exhibit dwarfing genes
  - 2019: New early human species found
  - First humans in Australia arrived 10,000 years earlier than thought

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.)
++++ Related news previously covered on this site includes:
  - Dogs likely evolved from a population of East Asian wolves
  - New dog genome analyses suggest dogs were domesticated before agriculture
  - Dogs were domesticated before our warm interglacial that began over 11,000 years ago.
  - American dogs came across Bering Straights rather than with Atlantic Vikings
  - The earliest domesticators of the horse were descended from hunter-gatherers
  - How sheep and goats may have been domesticated
  - The origins of domesticated cattle
  - Cattle were domesticated after humans left Africa
  - Cat domestication revealed   - The domestication of the horse elucidated
  - Humans ate chocolate over a thousand years earlier than previously thought
  - Domestication of Canηabis sativa revealed from genome.
  - Humans made booze – fermented vegetable matter – 13,000 years ago. Could alcohol consumption have stimulated the domestication of crops hence settlements, civilization and ultimately space travel

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).
          To put this into context, the global forest sink is equivalent to almost half of fossil-fuel emissions (7.8 Pg C/yr in 1990–2019).
          The researchers conclude that though the global forest sink has endured undiminished for three decades, despite regional variations, it could be weakened by ageing forests, continuing deforestation (particularly intact (natural) tropical forests) and further intensification of disturbance.  To protect the carbon sink, land management policies are needed to limit deforestation, promote forest restoration and improve timber-harvesting practices. Sadly, while biological conservation works, we really do need a heck of a lot more of it (see the next biological news item).  (See  Pan, Y. et al (2024) The enduring world forest carbon sink. Nature, vol. 631, p565-569.)

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?
          This new study finds that in two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, it finds that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes.  Biological conservation measures work, it is just that we need a lot more of them!  (See  Langhammer, P. F. et al (2024) The positive impact of conservation action. Science, vol. 384, p453–458.)

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.
          Ten national parks are designated in England for their landscape quality, wildlife, and value as a recreational resource. These special areas cover 9.3% of the land area in England and provide an important wildlife habitat. Over 23% of land in national parks in England is designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (a formal conservation designation in England which describes an area that is of particular interest to science because of the presence of rare species of fauna or flora or geological or physiological features).
          The results of this study show that if we are to protect these ecologically and societally important areas, much more needs to be done to understand the emissions and impacts of chemical pollutants into waterways in our national parks.  (See  Boxall, A. B. A. et al. (2024) Pharmaceutical Pollution of the English National Parks . Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry - Pre-print.)

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.
          The first part of the Hallett report, on preparedness, concludes that, in reality, the UK was ill prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus (CoVID-19) pandemic that actually struck.  Had the UK been better prepared for and more resilient to the pandemic, some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided.  There were fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK, how those risks and their consequences could be managed and prevented from worsening, and how they could be responded to.
          It recommends that the UK government, in consultation with the devolved administrations, should create a UK-wide independent statutory body for whole-system civil emergency preparedness, resilience and response. The body should provide independent, strategic advice to the UK government and devolved administrations, consult with the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector at a national and local level, as well as with directors of public health, and make recommendations.
It also noted that there was: a lack of coordination and leadership; that advice was not commissioned at the appropriate time; that advice may have been affected by ‘groupthink’, and that there was no entity that oversaw the system of expert scientific advice to ensure that it was broad-based, integrated and coordinated.  The Inquiry concluded that there must be a fundamentally new approach to pandemic and whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience.
          The second part of the inquiry will look at core UK decision-making and political governance.  The third, the Impact of the CoVID-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the four nations of the UK.  The fourth, vaccines.  The fifth, procurement.  The sixth, the care sector.  The 7th, test and trace. There will also be modules on children and economics.  (See  UK Covid-19 Inquiry (2024) Module 1: The resilience and preparedness of the United Kingdom. Stationery Office on behalf of the House of Commons.)

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:
  - Kent (scientifically called B.1.1.7) to be now known as Alpha
  - S. African (scientifically called B.1.351) to be now known as Beta
  - Brazilian (scientifically called P.1) to be now known as Gamma
  - Indian (scientifically called B.1.617) to be now known as Delta
  - Californian (scientifically called B.1.429, B.1.427 and CAL.20C) to be now known as Epsilon
  - Philippines (scientifically called P.3) to be now known as Theta
  - New York (scientifically called B.1.526) to be now known as Iota
  - Peru (scientifically called C.37) to be now known as Lambda
  - Colombia (scientifically called B.1.621) to be now known as Mu
  - S. Africa / Botswana (scientifically called B.1.1.529) with offshoots BA.1, BA.2 (which in turn led to XBB.1.5) , BA2.75 (unofficially Centaurus), BA2.86, BA.3, BA.4 and BA.5) to be now known as Omicron. It in turn has led to the BA.2.86 variant. Other Omicron subvariants emerged in 2023/4 include FLiRT and its closely related "FLuQE both are descended from BA.2.86.

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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Film News Television News Publishing News
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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.)
++++ Related news previously covered includes:
  - First stars got going 250 -350 million years after the Big Bang
  - First stars got going 180 million years after the Big Bang
  - Ancient stars detected 560 million years after the Big Bang
  - Ancient galaxy cluster detected 3.3 billion years after the Big Bang
  - Ancient galaxies lack dark matter

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.
          The Omega Centauri globular cluster lies within our galaxy some 15,000 light years away.  It has been speculated that Omega Centauri, with some 10 million stars, is the core of a dwarf galaxy that was disrupted and absorbed by our Milky Way galaxy.  Back in 2008 research suggested that it may have a central black hole (an intermediate-mass black hole) some 40,000 times the mass of the Sun but this work became the subject of some debate as there are no x-ray emissions which should be there if material was falling into the black hole. More recent work suggests that its mass is 12,000 solar masses.  However the latest work, conducted by an international collaboration of astronomers, examined the Hubble Space Telescope data set to look at the tiny movements of some 150,000 stars in the crowded central region over a 20-year period.  Seven stars at its centre are moving faster than the cluster's escape velocity: something is tying them to the cluster's centre and this 'something' is a black hole.  Looking carefully at the motion of five of these stars, the astronomers calculate the minimum mass of the central black hole should be about 8,200 times the mass of the Sun. This discovery lends credence to the idea that the omega cluster is the remains of a dwarf galaxy captured by our own.  This detection also makes this black hole the closest massive black hole so far discovered to the Earth.  (See  Häberle, M., et al Fast-moving stars around an intermediate-mass black hole in ω Centauri. Nature, vol. 631, p285-288.)

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.
          When it was discovered in 2023, the Exoplanet LHS 1140 b was assumed to be a mini-Neptune and does fit in this planet size gap. However, a detailed look at the James Webb space telescope data, and matching this to planetary climate models, suggests it might actually be a frozen super-Earth!
          LHS 1140 b is only 40 light-years away. The researchers do need more data, but what they have suggests that it is not a min-Neptune but a frozen super-Earth with a nitrogen atmosphere or alternatively a carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere. There is also the possibility that while covered in ice that there is an open patch of ocean at its equator. Because it is tidally locked around its cool, red dwarf star, this patch of ocean surrounded by ice would make the planet look a bit like an eyeball.  Its radius is 1.73 times that of the Earth. (Incidentally, the system also has a hot super-Earth 1.37 times the size of the Earth.)
          This new appraisal comes hot on the heals of last season's exo-planet news of the possible discovery of the first tidally-locked super-Earth.  (See  Cadieux, C. et al (2024) Transmission Spectroscopy of the Habitable Zone Exoplanet LHS 1140 b with JWST/NIRISS. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 970, L2.)
++++  Related news previously covered elsewhere on this site includes:
  - First tidally-locked super-Earth discovered… Possibly
  - New search finds 85 exo-planet candidates cool enough for liquid water
  - Two habitable zone, near Earth-sized, planets found… Almost!
  - The first transit detection of methane in an exo-planet atmosphere
  - Move over stars' habitable zones – Photosynthetic zones are the thing
  - A temperate exo-Earth has been detected!
  - A super-Earth may be a super-sauna
  - Exo-planet TRAPPIST-1c Earth-sized planet has no atmosphere
  - Exo-planet TRAPPIST-1b Earth-sized planet has no atmosphere
  - A single star has three super-Earths – and two rare super-Mercuries
  - There could be watery planets around red dwarf stars
  - First ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star captured
  - Giant planet pictured orbiting far from a twin star system
  - The first exo-planet has possibly been detected outside of our Galaxy
  - How many alien worlds could detect our small rocky plant, the Earth?
  - A hot Jupiter's atmosphere reveals cooler origins
  - Another planet survives red giant death phase of a star
  - How many Solar system type planetary systems are there in our spiral arm? We may soon be finding out
  - Quiet star holds out prospect for life near Earth
  - European Space Agency's CHEOPS launched to study exoplanets
  - NASA's TESS finds exoplanet in habitable zone
  - NASA's TESS finds its first planet orbiting two suns
  - Two more twin sun planetary systems found
  - Rocky planets with the composition similar to Earth and Mars are common in the Galaxy a new type of analysis reveals
  - Water detected on an exo-planet large analogue of Earth
  - 2019 and the number of exoplanets discovered tops 4,000!
  - A new technique probes atmosphere of exoplanet
  - European satellite observatory mission to study exoplanet atmospheres
  - The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to launch
  - Seven near Earth-sized planets found in one system
  - Most Earth-like planets may be water worlds
  - Earth's fate glimpsed
  - An Earth-like exo-planet has been detected
  - Exoplanet reflected light elucidated
  - Kepler has now detected over 1,000 exoplanets and one could be an Earth twin
  - and Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a cool star.
  - Winston Churchill wrote about the possibility of alien life: documents found

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.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
Film News Television News Publishing News
Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

Autumn 2024

Science & Science Fiction Interface

Real 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.
          A Dyson sphere is a theoretical concept seriously developed in 1960 by Freeman Dyson, but actually originating from the novel Star Maker (1937) by Olaf Stapledon. The Dyson sphere is a construct that completely surrounds a star and so captures all of, or most of, its visible light. Similarly, a Dyson swarm is a multitude of small orbiting bodies about a star that captures the majority of its light. While Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms capture visible light, they in turn warm and so give off infra-red (IR) and this IR excess might be considered a 'techno-signature' of an extraterrestrial civilisation.
          Combing through the Gaia, WISE and 2MASS data, the astronomers come up with 7 possible candidates for Dyson spheres/swarms. The nearest is 466 light years away. All are M-type stars or red dwarfs. The astronomers do point out that there are several alternate natural explanations to the Dyson sphere/swarm suggestions but none of them fully explain the spectra seen from these candidate stars.  (See   Suazo, M. et al (2024) Project Hephaistos – II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. vol. 531 p695–707.)

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.
          This mathematical interpretation is a result of applying Edwin Jaynes' probability.  David Kipping at the Cool Worlds YouTube Channel as made a short 20-minute video on this.  Their conclusion is that the cosmos is either teeming with intelligent civilisations, or we're essentially alone. Either way, because we detect nothing, we need to greatly expand the number of stars we look at from the paltry small proportion of the Galaxy we currently look at as well as increase our methods of detection.  This work (very, very) loosely chimes with previous 'Grabby Aliens' theory.  (See Kipping, D., & Geraint, L. (2024) Do SETI optimists have a fine-tuning problem? Submitted for peer review pre-print. International Journal of Astrobiology.)

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.
          Now, just because a molecule exhibits supperradience by itself is not absolute proof that the molecule can behave in an entangled quantum way, however it is at the very least corroborating evidence.
          Also, don't be quick to rule out the 'warm and wet' problem just because physicists find it difficult.  In biology we think that photosynthesis (how plants harness sunlight's energy) likely relies on quantum effects: it is possible that quantum coherence and electron tunnelling are involved in photosynthesis. Quantum biology is a thing.
          Finally, lets think of the SF implications of all of this. Given the number of microtubules in the brain and given the number of calculations quantum computers can do, then to get General Artificial Intelligence (that's 2001 HAL level of A.I.) we would need a very, very large quantum computer and that seems a very long way off and is certainly not something we can do with conventional, analogue computers. If this is so, then it may mean our getting a powerful A.I. capable of conscious, independent thought is unlikely.
          That's everything in a nutshell. Matt O’Dowd explains it with a little more detail (and fortunately with no heavy mathematical equations).  You can see the 19 minute video here.

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.
          Greatly summarised, using a simple-ish mathematical model, the paper's basic contention was that either we are alone in the Galaxy or that we should soon see long arcs in the sky from alien civilisations and that the aliens would arrive (possibly in a wave front travelling at over half the speed of light) and likely take us over, at least culturally/technologically, and so curb our own expansion to control a sphere of stars for ourselves.   Subsequently, there was much debate, but if you don’t want to take a deep dive into the rather dry paper then a year ago physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time did a neat 20-minute video (with now over 2 million views) explaining it all (we previously linked to this in our afore earlier coverage).  This brings us to the present and Brit astrophysicist David Kipping of Columbia University, New York, and host of Cool Worlds has jumped onto the debate.

>

          There are many possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox but a few have risen to particular prominence - including the "Grabby Aliens" hypothesis. Today, we'll explore what this solution proposes, what it assumes, and ultimately three reasons why I personally don't think it's right.

          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.
        However, Grammaticus has found one SF novel that seems to have hit the mark when it comes to the future of warfare: Fred Saberhagin's series of Berserker Wars (from 1967).  It is a bleak, dark vision with artificial intelligence, drones and even co-ordinated fleets of A.I. drones on the modern battlefield. Grammaticus says that you could see this in Syria in 2015/6 and now today in Ukraine with individual drones hunting down human soldiers.  He envisions that soon we will be seeing autonomous A.I. controlled drones because they can react faster than a human. However, he comes with a caveat in the form of a 1965 classic novel…  &; You can see the 8-minute video here.

 

Season's Editorial & Staff Stuff Key SF News & Awards
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Forthcoming SF Books Forthcoming Fantasy Books Forthcoming Non-Fiction
General Science News Natural Science News Astronomy & Space News
Science & SF Interface Rest In Peace End Bits

Autumn 2024

Rest In Peace

The 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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Autumn 2024

End Bits & Thanks

 

 

More science and SF news will be summarised in our Spring 2025 upload in January
plus there will also be 'forthcoming' Spring book releases, plus loads of stand-alone reviews. (Remember, these season's relate to the northern hemisphere 'academic year'.)

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.

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