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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories featured in this episode:

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

Theme music by Dain Luscombe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(13) COMICS SECTION.

• Dark Side of the Horse knows disguises.
• Rubes knows about speed.
• Savage Chickens continues the story of Man-Spider. 
• xkcd should just buy from the artist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Stone and Sky (2nd review) – Ben Aaronovitch
• Brigands & Breadknives – Travis Baldree
• Robots: Past & Future Short Stories – Chris Beckett
• If we Cannot go at the Speed of Light – Kim Choyeop
• The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World – J. R. Dawson
• Hell’s Heart – Alexis Hall
• Fateless – Julie Kagawa
• The Menu of Happiness – Hisashi Kashiwai
• Wolf Worm – T. Kingfisher
• Always Coming Home – Ursula K. LeGuin
• Thirsty – Lucy Lehane
• The Blackfire Blade: The Last Legacy – James Logan
• The Secret of Life (3rd review) – Paul McAuley
• This Bursted Earth – Garth Marenghi
• Cinder House – Freya Marske
• Fever Dreams – Mark Morris
• Buried Deep and Other Stories (2nd review) – Naomi Novik
• The Affirmation – Christopher Priest
• Tailored Realities – Brandon Sanderson
• Crossroads of Ravens – Andrzej Sapkowski
• Monday Starts on Saturday – Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
• Daedalus Is Dead – Seamus Sullivan
• Children of Strife – Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Made Things – Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Fallen Gods – Rachel Van Dyken

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

• George Orwell: Life and Legacy – Robert Colls
• Shaking Hands With Death – Terry Pratchett

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